Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon was born about 1150 in Lunel, in the Languedoc region of what is today France. Best known as a translator of rabbinic literature from Arabic to Hebrew, he was also an important Jewish philosopher.
His principal theological work was a commentary on Ecclesiastes and a philosophicalexegetical monograph entitled Ma’amar Yiqqawu ha-Mayim. The latter work, which may be translated as Treatise on “Let the waters be gathered” (Gen 1:9), was written perhaps in 1221 or 1231. Like some of Ibn Tibbon’s other writing, it is clearly inspired by Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, and it uses the verse from Genesis to explore a unique cosmological question: Why is the earth not covered entirely by water? It finds the answers to this question in a rational exegesis of other portions of the Old Testament, namely verses from Genesis, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Job, and the Book of Psalms.
Samuel ibn Tibbon was one of the great masters of medieval Jewish philosophical exegesis of Scripture. His work is a kind of model of this analytical and argumentative hermeneutic technique, useful in theology and the philosophy of religion alike. In Ibn Tibbon’s hands, it also became a bridge to profound issues of creation and cosmology.
Ibn Tibbon’s father, Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, gave him a full traditional Jewish education in the rabbinic literature. He also sought for him other teachers in Lunel to school him as a physician and to impart to him other important knowledge from the secular realm.
Samuel ibn Tibbon was married and had children. We know that his son, Moses ibn Tibbon, translated religious and philosophical works from Arabic to Hebrew. Samuel was widely traveled. He lived in several towns in the south of France, including Béziers and Arles, and he sojourned in Barcelona, Toledo, and Alexandria during 1210–1213. His final permanent residence was in Marseilles, where he died about 1230. His corpse was carried to what was then the Kingdom of Jerusalem and was buried in Tiberias.
