Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph
Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph(Hebrew:גדליה אבן יחיא בן יוסף;c. 1515– 1587) was a 16th-century ItalianTalmudistof the prominentYahya familychiefly known for hischronology of the Bible,The Chain of Oral Tradition(Hebrew:שלשלת הקבלה,romanized:Shalsheleṯ haqabbālā).[1]
Biography
[edit]Born inImola,Italy, the son ofJoseph ibn Yahya ben Solomonand Abigail. In his early years he studied inFerrara,later settling down inRovigo,where he remained until 1562 when the burning of the Talmud took place in Italy. Following this he briefly lived inSalonica,moving back to Imola in 1567. He was later expelled with other Jews byPope Pius V,and suffering a loss of 10,000 gold pieces, he went toPesaro,and thence to Ferrara, where he remained till 1575. During the ensuing eight years he led a wandering life, and finally settled inAlexandria,which perhaps is where he died in 1587. Another theory "indicates that Gedaliah did not die in Alexandria, Egypt, but inAlessandria,a town sixty to seventy miles northwest of Genoa, Italy, along the road to Turin. "[2]
Ibn Yayha's chief work was theChain of Oral Tradition,also called theBook of Yahya(Sefer Yahya),[3]which he labored on for more than forty years. This work is not without defects, having suffered either because of the author's itinerant mode of life or through faulty copying of the original manuscript. Its contents are as follows:[4]
- History and genealogy of theJewsfrom the time ofMosesuntil that ofMoses Norzi(1587)
- Account of the heavenly bodies, Creation, the soul, magic, and evil spirits
- History of the peoples among which the Jews have dwelt, and a description of the unhappy fate of the author's coreligionists up to his time.
TheChain of Oral Traditionwas published atVenice,1587;Kraków,1596;Amsterdam,1697;Zolkiev,1802, 1804;Polonnoye,1814; andLemberg,1862.
Gedaliah was the alleged author of twenty-one other works, which he enumerates at the end of hisChainand which are mentioned also inIsaac ben Jacob Benjacob'sOṣar ha-Sefarim.
References
[edit]- ^David, Abraham (21 May 2021)."The Historian R. Gedalya Ibn Yahya".Poetic Mind.Retrieved19 December2023.
- ^Menton, Arthur F. (18 January 2021)."The Book of Destiny – Toledot Charlap – Chapter XXVI".Poetic Mind.
- ^Menton, Arthur F. (4 March 2021)."King David Dynasty: the Charlap family ascension".
89B. Gedaliah ben Yosef lbn Yahya; b. 1515; d. 1587, Alexandria, Egypt, or Alessandria, Italy; m. twice; resident of Italy, Salonika, and Alexandria; scholar (secular & religious), historian, writer, author of Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah. Father of seven children: a son by his first wife, and by his second wife, Yosef (d. ca 1610), Yehuda (b.c. 1540), Moshe (d.c. 1615), Shlomo (d.c. 1620), David (d. ca 1625), and Chana (d. ca 1625). Gedaliah had many grandchildren whose names are not known. Several of his descendants lived in Italy and there is a Yahya presence in that country to this day. The children of his son Yehuda are known.
- ^"YAḤYA".jewishencyclopedia.Retrieved2020-10-25.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Singer, Isidore;et al., eds. (1901–1906)."Yahya".The Jewish Encyclopedia.New York: Funk & Wagnalls.- Maria L. Mayer Modena,La Masseket Hamor di Gedalyà ibn Yahia, “Italia”, In Memory ofGiuseppe Sermoneta,XIII-XV (2001), pp. 303–342
- In praise of women – the article of Rabbi Gedaliah Ibn Yahya (1526-1587)
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