Yehuda Halper, “Was Socrates a Wise, Ascetic Monotheist or a Vocal Skeptic? The Two Socrateses of Medieval Jewish Doxography”

From the death of Philo of Alexandria in the 1^st century C.E. until the dissemination of Marsilio Ficino’s Latin translations at the end of the 15^th century, we have no records of Jews reading Plato’s dialogues. If they encountered Plato in Arabic or Latin translation, they make no admission to having read his works. Medieval Jews certainly did not read Xenophon or Aristophanes. Still, they did occasionally encounter Socrates, primarily through doxographical literature, i.e., sentences, anecdotes, and aphorisms that describe or are attributed to Socrates. These doxographical sources were part of and derivative from a robust Arabic wisdom literature which drew on various Greek, Persian, and Syriac compilations of wisdom literature. While such literature generally combined depictions of Socrates from various sources, Jewish accounts in both Hebrew and Arabic present two separate, even incompatible views of Socrates. So distinct are these views that that we may even speak of two “Socrateses.” The best known of these Socrateses to medieval Jews is the least recognizable to the modern reader: he is a wise, ascetic, monotheist, who dispenses unquestioning and unquestioned advice in memorable proverbs and maxims. This is the Socrates we find in, e.g., Solomon Ibn Gabirol (d. ~1057-1070), Moses Ibn Ezra (d. 1138), Judah Al-Ḥarizi (d. 1225), Shem Ṭob Falaquera (d. 1290), Moses Nahmanides (d. 1270), Joseph Kaspi (d. 1345), Moses Narboni (d. after 1362), and Joseph Albo (d. 1444). The other Socrates, far less known in the Middle Ages than the first is skeptical of theology and divine law, while at the same time relentlessly inquiring into the divine, human ethics, and the relationship between them. We find this Socrates in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari as well as Hebrew translations Al-Farabi and Averroes, using quotations deriving indirectly from Plato’s Apology. While both Socrateses appear in similar kinds of statements or anecdotes, Jewish authors view him only in one of these two ways: either as a wise, ascetic monotheist or as a vocal skeptic. Never in Jewish literature before Ficino, in Arabic or in Hebrew, is he depicted as a combination of the two, e.g., as an ascetic skeptic or even as a skeptical monotheist.