Judah ibn tibbon: The cultural and intellectual profile of the “father of the Hebrew translation movement”

The most conventional starting points for any research project on the development of Hebrew terminology in medieval philosophy and science are undoubtedly the translators of the Tibbonide dynasty, and among them Judah Ibn Tibbon - the so-called “father of the translators” ( He can be called “father” in the double sense of the word: he is the biological father, grandfather, and grandfather-in-law of the following generations of translators within his own family - his son Samuel Ibn Tibbon, his grandson Moses Ibn Tibbon, his grandson-in-law Jacob Anatoli, and his great-grandson Jacob b. Makhir - and the spiritual father of this fascinating, large-scale and enduring enterprise to acculturate philosophical and scientific learning from Arabic, and later also from Latin, culture into Judaism - a phenomenon which is comparable to the reception of Greek knowledge by the Arabs and the acculturation of Greco-Arabic knowledge in medieval scholasticism.