ABSTRACT

Eldad’s riveting corpus attracted many scholars, who indeed compiled and sorted the material. The primary full and coherent sources that pertain to Eldad are fifteenth-century prints of Sefer Eldad and Shalshelet ha-kabbalah by Gedalyah ibn Yahya. A host of other texts that are ascribed to Eldad were commonplace among medieval Jews: in legal writings, stories, midrash, polemical literature, and grammar. The theory as to Eldad’s Yemenite origins was bolstered by Shelomo Morag’s efforts to determine the adventurer’s origins by dint of the Hebrew on his lips. The linguist opined that there are clear vestiges of Arabic and Syriac in Eldad’s language. In sum, the lone channel through which Eldad’s texts have survived is copies that were rendered hundreds of years after his passing. Eldad made use of preexisting texts, like Moshe ha-Darshan’s midrash, which the former adapted to suit his own needs.