Origins and transmission of liber Abraham iudei de nativitatibus: A new appraisal based on manuscript evidence and other sources

The Liber Abraham Iudei de Nativitatibus is a Latin astrological treatise that has no surviving Hebrew counterpart, and whose affiliation with Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1189-ca. 1160) is unclear. Till now De nativitatibus has been known to modern scholarship almost exclusively through the first print edition, produced in Venice in 1485. Building on the mention in the print edition of 1154 as the date of composition, it has been argued that De nativitatibus was written in Latin by Ibn Ezra or with his active participation for a Latin readership. The present paper presents a totally new picture by taking into account the evidence provided by virtually all the available manuscript witnesses of this text and other unknown sources. It will be shown that the archetype of De nativitatibus was written in Hebrew by Ibn Ezra, that De nativitatibus was composed in Latin in 1166 or slightly later, when Ibn Ezra was no longer alive, that De nativitatibus was transmitted in four very different versions, and that one of these versions was written by Henry Bate, who first translated into Latin a collection of Ibn Ezra's astrological writings.