BIBAGO, ABRAHAM BEN SHEM-TOV. Derech Emunah [philosophy]. FIRST EDITION....

BIBAGO, ABRAHAM BEN SHEM-TOV.
Derech Emunah [philosophy].

FIRST EDITION. A wide-margined copy. With rare title-page. Marginalia.
ff. (102). Light wear, title remargined and with small blank area excised, previous owner’s inscriptions. Modern blind-tooled calf. Folio. Vinograd, Const. 127.
Constantinople: n.p. 1521

Derech Emunah is a presentation of Judaism by which Man’s goal in life is to seek to obtain the deepest appreciation and understanding of God, and thus ultimately, eternal happiness. Many Biblical and rabbinic passages are brought, yet the author also takes note of Christian and Islamic theology. He quotes Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, also Euclid and Ptolemeus, Galen and Themistius, as well as Arabic thinkers: Averroes, Avicenna, Alfarabi and Gazzali and even the fable-book “Kalila we-Dimna.” Of Jewish writers the author quotes not only rationalists such as Maimonides, Nachmanides, and other such philosophers, but also many Kabbalists. R. Abraham Bibago was born in the Spanish province of Aragon and resided in Huesca and Saragossa. He likely died just prior to the Expulsion of Jews from Spain. According to Isaac Arama, Bibago was “one of the most important scholars and philosophers of our people” (Akeidath Yitzchak, gate 80). See A. Lazaroff, The Theology of Abraham Bibagio: A Defence of the Divine Will, Knowledge and Providence in Fifteenth Century Spanish-Jewish Philosophy (1981).