Galen on Jews and Christians

The Roman medical writer Galen (d. 199 AD) refers to Jewish or Christian ideas in six places in his works.

Some of the works of Galen involved no longer exist in Greek, and the Arabic translation has to be used.  In some cases the Arabic translation also has perished — although we know from Hunayn Ibn Ishaq that he translated it — and all we have is quotations in later writers.

Unfortunately Walzer, who published a monograph on the subject in 1949[1] did so in a very confused manner.  It was nearly impossible to work out from his text what precisely he was giving us, and from where.  Nor was it possible to see what the context of the quotations was.

It was as part of this process that I encountered Ibn Abi Usaibia, and was led to put an English translation online.

I have now transcribed these six passages, organised the material in a logical manner, looked up material that Walzer did not include, and compiled a web page of it all.

The result is here.  I hope it will be useful.

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  1. [1]R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, Oxford, 1949.