Dodi Ve-Nechdi (Quaestiones Naturales)

As regards Adelard of Bath—Berachya's original source—and the circumstances under which he studied and wrote, along with a list of the works attributed to him and a specimen of the Latin text, I refer the reader to an interesting notice by Thomas Wright in Biographia Britannica Literaria, or Biography of Literary Characters of Great Britain and Ireland, Anglo-Norman Period (1846).

It may be of interest if I here quote some passages from that article:

"Athelard [Adelard] is the greatest name in English science before Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. His name would lead us to believe that he was of Saxon blood. He was born probably in the latter part of the 11th century and first left England to study in the schools of Tours and Laon. In the latter place, he opened a school and had among other disciples his nephew, to whom he appears to have been affectionately attached. But Athelard's love of knowledge was unsatisfied with the state of science in France; he left his school, crossed the Alps to Salerno, and proceeded to Greece and Asia Minor. It is very probable that he went to study among the Arabs in the East. Baghdad and Egypt were then the seats of Arabian literature. On his arrival in his native country after an absence of seven years, the throne, he tells us, was occupied by Henry I.; and one of the first books he published after his arrival, being dedicated to William, Bishop of Syracuse, must have been written before 1116, the date of that prelate's death. This tract, which bears some resemblance to the Judgment of Hercules by the Grecian Prodicus, and which is entitled De eodem et diverso original: "On the Same and the Different", is an allegory in which Athelard justifies his passion for the sciences; he introduces Philosophy and Philocosmia (or the love of worldly enjoyment) as appearing to him on the banks of the Loire in the form of two women when he was a student at Tours, and disputing for the possession of his affections, until he threw himself into the arms of Philosophy, drove away her rival with disgrace, and entered on the path of learning with that ardor which induced him subsequently to seek instruction even amongst the distant Arabs."

(Perhaps I ought in fairness to state here that the theory has been put forward that the entire reference to a journey to the Arabs is an imaginary journey, not a real one—an