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Updated: June 15, 2025


Hence, as happened also with the legend of the Queen of Sheba and her riddles, the versions vary considerably as to the actual content of the questions and answers bandied between Solomon and Marcolf. In the German and English versions, the proverbs and wisdom are largely Teutonic; in Zabara they are Oriental, and, in particular, Arabic.

It will be thought, from the summary mode in which I have rendered these stories, that I take Zabara to be rather a literary curiosity than a poet. But Zabara's poetical merits are considerable. If I have refrained from attempting a literal rendering, it is mainly because the rhymed-prose genre is so characteristically Oriental that its charm is incommunicable in a Western language.

Who but a doctor would enter into a scathing denunciation of the current system of diagnosis, as Zabara does in a sarcastic passage, which Erter may have imitated unconsciously? And if further proof be needed that Zabara was a man of science, the evidence is forthcoming; for Zabara appeals several times to experiment in proof of his assertions.

The reader of Zabara feels that other poets will develop his style and surpass him; the reader of Charizi knows of a surety that in him the style has reached its climax. That this romance is largely autobiographical in fact, as it is in form, there can be no reasonable doubt.

Joseph Zabara has only in recent times received the consideration justly due to him. It is a golden link between folk-literature and imaginative poetry. The style is original, and the framework of the story is an altogether fresh adaptation of a famous legend. The anecdotes and epigrams introduced incidentally also partake of this twofold quality.

"Never send for a doctor," says the satirist, "for one cannot expect a miracle to happen." The life of Joseph ben Meir Zabara was not happy. He left Barcelona in search of learning and comfort. He found the former, but the latter eluded him. On the one hand, he says many pretty things about women.

The connection between Zabara's work and the Solomon and Marcolf legend was first pointed out in my "Short History of Jewish Literature" , p. 95. I had long before detected the resemblance, though I was not aware of it when I wrote an essay on Zabara in the Jewish Quarterly Review. A number of parallels with other folk-literatures are there indicated; others have been added by Dr.

I have not translated at full length, but I have endeavored to render Zabara accurately, without introducing thoughts foreign to him. I have not thought it necessary to give elaborate parallels to Zabara's stories, nor to compare minutely the various details of the Marcolf legend with Zabara's poem. On the whole, it may be said that the parallel is general rather than specific.

Joseph Kimchi, who flourished in Provence from 1150 to 1170, quotes Joseph Zabara twice, with approval, in explaining verses in Proverbs. It would thus seem that Zabara, even in his student days, was devoted to the proverb-lore on which he draws so lavishly in his maturer work. Dr.

He was born in Barcelona, and returned there to die. In the interval, we find him an apt pupil of Joseph Kimchi, in Narbonne. Joseph Kimchi, the founder of the famous Kimchi family, carried the culture of Spain to Provence; and Joseph Zabara may have acquired from Kimchi his mastery over Hebrew, which he writes with purity and simplicity.

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