Ars Astronomica | First English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural philosophy.

Ars Astronomica

A scholarly imprint producing first English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural philosophy.

These texts span centuries, and most have never appeared in English. One – Gersonides’ 136-chapter mathematical astronomy – was never printed and survives only in manuscript. They cite and answer one another, addressing the same cosmological questions, yet until now no one could read them side by side in a single language.

The corpus

Date<br>Author<br>Work<br>Source<br>Description<br>Translator Version

1665<br>Athanasius Kircher<br>Mundus Subterraneus<br>footnotes<br>Internet Archive — athanasiikircher12kirc<br>A vast attempt to explain the whole hidden world beneath our feet.

c. 1613<br>David Gans<br>Nechmad ve-Na’im<br>footnotes<br>National Library of Israel — Rosetta IE32709375, shelfmark 35 V 1770 (catalog NNL_ALEPH990011964030205171).<br>A Hebrew textbook of astronomy that presents the Ptolemaic model of the heavens for a Hebrew-reading audience, weaving the cutting-edge European science of its day together with the medieval Jewish cosmological tradition — its author having personally visited the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.

1592 (first composed/printed Prague, שנ”ב; this is a later reprint)<br>David Gans<br>Tzemach David<br>footnotes<br>National Library of Israel — Rosetta IE90688593 (record labeled “Vol.1-3”).<br>A Hebrew historical chronicle in two parts by David Gans: the first traces Jewish history from creation to the sixteenth century — biblical figures, sages, and rabbis; the second surveys world and gentile history from Julius Caesar to Emperor Rudolph.

1665<br>Giovanni Battista Riccioli<br>Astronomia Reformata<br>footnotes<br>e-rara ETH-Bibliothek Zürich — title-info 141744<br>A mature reckoning with the heavens as the telescope was revealing them — a sequel to the vast Almagestum Novum (1651), built on further years of observation at Bologna with the collaborator Grimaldi, with fresh measurements and corrected parameters at center stage.

c. 1123 (composition; this is a later manuscript copy)<br>Jacob ben Samson (attrib.)<br>Perush Sod ha-Ibbur<br>footnotes<br>OPenn UPenn-hosted digitization of the British Library manuscript — British Library Add MS 11639, ff. 511r–545v<br>An early Ashkenazi commentary on the “secret of the calendar” (sod ha-ibbur) — the computation of the Hebrew calendar: the molad (lunar conjunction), the tequfot (seasonal points), the nineteen-year intercalation cycle, and the rules governing leap years and festival dates.

1629<br>Joseph Solomon Delmedigo<br>Sefer Elim<br>footnotes<br>Internet Archive — seferelim00delmuoft<br>A wide-ranging Hebrew scientific compendium, framed as a reply to questions put by the Karaite scholar Zerah ben Nathan.

1640<br>Longomontanus<br>Astronomia Danica<br>footnotes<br>Internet Archive — astronomiadanica00long<br>A comprehensive textbook of astronomy and the definitive technical account of the Tychonic system — Earth at rest, the Sun circling it, the planets circling the Sun.

1654<br>Pierre Gassendi<br>Tychonis Brahei Vita<br>footnotes<br>Internet Archive — den-kbd-pil-130018157889-001<br>A life of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601): his fabled observatory on the island of Hven, the magnificent instruments he built, the campaigns of observation that remade astronomy, his bold model of the cosmos, and his turbulent final years in Prague.

c. 1136<br>R. Avraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi<br>Cheshbon Mahalechot ha-Kochavim<br>footnotes<br>HebrewBooks.org — ID 22072<br>A medieval Hebrew treatise on mathematical astronomy and the computation of the Jewish calendar.

c. 1122<br>R. Avraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi<br>Sefer HaIbbur<br>footnotes<br>HebrewBooks.org — ID 21292<br>The earliest systematic Hebrew treatise on the science of the calendar, written in early-twelfth-century Barcelona.

c. 1132<br>R. Avraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi<br>Sefer Tsurat ha-Arets<br>footnotes<br>NYPL Digital Collections Dorot Jewish Division — item ce668260-c766-0132-045a-58d385a7b928<br>A foundational work of medieval cosmology that lays out the shape of the cosmos as the Greeks and their Arabic heirs understood it: a spherical earth at the center of nested celestial spheres, the paths of sun and moon, and the zones and geography of the inhabited world.

c. 1148<br>R. Avraham ibn Ezra<br>Keli ha-Nechoshet<br>footnotes<br>HebrewBooks.org — ID 20850<br>The earliest surviving Hebrew treatise on the astrolabe, composed in the mid-twelfth century.

c. 1500<br>R. Eliyahu Mizrahi<br>Kitsur ha-Melakhat ha-Mispar<br>footnotes<br>NYPL Digital Collections Dorot Jewish Division — item ce668260-c766-0132-045a-58d385a7b928<br>Kitsur ha-Melakhat ha-Mispar (“Compendium of the Art of Number”) is a Hebrew arithmetic textbook by Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrahi (ca. 1455–1526), the chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire and one of the foremost Jewish mathematicians of his age.

c. 1365<br>R. Immanuel Bonfils<br>Shesh Kenafayim<br>footnotes<br>University of Pennsylvania — Kislak Center, LJS 204 Digital Scriptorium DS129<br>One of...