8. “Ancient Jewish Sciences” and the Historiography of Judaism Annette Yoshiko Reed * Even a decade or so ago, it might have been difcult to imagine an entire conference and volume devoted to “ancient Jewish sciences.” In Jewish Thought and Scientifc Discovery in Early Modern Europe , for instance, David Ruderman noted how he had “originally intended to begin … with an overview of attitudes towards the natural world in ancient Judaism,” only to encounter “a vast body of material in an area that has not been fully studied.” 1 Such was the dearth of research that it warranted its own Appendix—a bibliographical essay sketching possible paths ahead. 2 Similarly, in 2002, when Y. Tzvi Langermann investigated the “beginnings of Hebrew scientifc literature,” the period that he had in mind was the eighth and ninth centuries CE, and the works in question were Baraita de-Shmuel, Sefer Yetzirah, Mishnat ha-Midot, and Yetzirat ha-Walad, as well as possible “products of the same creative spurt” such as Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer, Midrash Konen, and Sefer Asaf ha-Rofe. 3 Shortly after, Shlomo Sela cited many of the same works as “early” precedents for the twelfth-century “rise of medieval Hebrew science,” albeit stressing that even these can be “hardly * Earlier versions of this essay were pre-circulated for and presented at the ISAW conference on which the present volume is based. I am grateful to Jonathan Ben-Dov, Seth Sanders, and Mladen Popović for thought-provoking conversations before, during, and after the conference; I hope that the present essay captures even a little of what I have learned from them. Benjamin Wright, Lawrence Schifman, Seth Schwartz, Steven R. Reed, and Benjamin J. Fleming also ofered crucial feedback on various earlier forms. Special thanks to David Ruderman for theoretical insights and bibliographical suggestions on the penultimate draft, and to William McCants and Nicholas Harris for their aid in navigating the relevant Islamic and Judeo-Arabic materials. 1 David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientifc Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 [1995]), 375. 2 Ibid, 375-382. 3 Y. Tzvi Langermann “On the Beginnings of Hebrew Scientifc Literature and on Studying History through ‘Maqbilot’ (Parallels)”, Aleph 2 (2002): 169-176.