both as a professional art and as a science. Coming from the East, Jews were sometimes looked upon as heirs and successors of the Chaldeans. For this reason, Jews sometimes were regarded by the Western world as masters of astrology. Their supposed power over destiny on occasion filled the multitudes with awe and fear. Abraham ibn Ezra was a follower of astrology, which he calls "a sublime science." Besides translating another Jewish philosopher Mashallah's astrological work Questions and another work of this author on the eclipse of the moon from the Arabic into Hebrew, he wrote Nativity, Sentences of the Constellations, Reshit Hokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom), Book of the World, a treatise on the Planets, a treatise on the Luminaries, and a horoscope. He often refers to astrology in his Bible commentaries. To him heaven with its constellations is "the book of life," in which man's destiny is written, and against which there is recourse to God as "the Almighty," who overrules all these influences. A modern scholar summarizes Ibn Ezra's attitude as follows: "The deity has delegated to the stars the governance of the sublunar world. Israel [Jews], however, enjoys a special status, which is manifest most decisively in its possession of the Torah. As long as a Jew is engaged in the study and observance of the Torah, he is linked to a spiritual realm which is itself superior to the stars. In this way a Jew may liberate himself from the decrees of the stars." Dunash ibn Tamim (850-956 CE, North Africa), who wrote a commentary on the Kabbalistic work Sefer Yetzirah, wrote a treatise on astronomy which rejected astrology. Abraham ben David of Posquières asserted the influence of the stars upon destiny, while also contending that by faith in God man may overcome this influence. Gersonides believed that astrology was real, and developed a naturalistic, non-supernatural explanation of how it works. For Gersonides, astrology was: founded on the metaphysical doctrine of the dependence of all earthly occurrences upon the heavenly world. The general connection imparted to the prophet by the active intellect is the general order of the astrological constellation. The constellation under which a man is born determines his nature and fate, and constellations as well determine the life span of nations....The active intellect knows the astrological order, from the most general form of the constellations to their last specification, which in turn contains all