Talk:Emerald Tablet

I’d love to get some other perspectives on this, but “The Alchemy Web Site”, which seems to be maintained by a single person of questionable web-design sensibilities, just does not strike me as a reliable source. I have removed the following section sourced from it.

Theatrum Chemicum translation

Another translation can be found in Theatrum Chemicum, Volume IV (1613), in Georg Beatus' Aureliae Occultae Philosophorum:^{[1][self-published source?]}

This is true and remote from all cover of falsehood
Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.
Also, as all things are made from one, by the [consideration] of one, so all things were made from this one, by conjunction.
The father of it is the sun, the mother the moon. The wind bore it in the womb. Its nurse is the earth, the mother of all perfection.
Its power is perfected. If it is turned into earth.
Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle and thin from the crude and [coarse], prudently, with modesty and wisdom.
This ascends from the earth into the sky and again descends from the sky to the earth, and receives the power and efficacy of things above and of things below.
By this means you will acquire the glory of the whole world,
And so you will drive away all shadows and blindness.
For this by its fortitude snatches the palm from all other fortitude and power. For it is able to penetrate and subdue everything subtle and everything crude and hard.
By this means the world was founded
And hence the marvelous conjunctions of it and admirable effects, since this is the way by which these marvels may be brought about.
And because of this they have called me Hermes Tristmegistus since I have the three parts of the wisdom and philosophy of the whole universe.
My speech is finished which I have spoken concerning the solar work

1. [1]

   Georgio Beato. Aurelium Occultae Philosophorum. (Davis 1926: 874.) Retrieved March 4, 2013 from levity.com

—67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

The design may belong to the mid 90s, but that site's owner is a recognized author in the field. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Also a major author of his own WP article . But if you think it satisfies WP:SPS and benefits the article, I wouldn’t object to restoring it. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:41, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

His attempted edits are not currently in the article. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

If you wanted to keep it out for the sake of brevity ok, but as stated above McLean is a good source. Could likely use another source link for the translation, but the "The Alchemy Website" link contains valuable further information. Aside: I did a major edit on Adam McLean a while back and the autobiographical content has been removed. Car Henkel (talk) 23:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

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@Randy Kryn: Nice to see you keeping an eye on this page! Bit surprised you reverted the image edit though - this one seems much lower quality (though stronger contrast) than this one I switched in. Could you possibly give me some advice on how you made the call so I have a better idea of where to replace images with higher res ones and where not to in the future? Zeromonk (talk) 07:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Could be screen setting, but on my screen the image you used is faded compared to the easily seen crisp present image. It is also obviously from a book (notice the crease line up the middle), while the long-term image used on the page is also from a book but not obviously. Maybe other editors will comment, thanks for the ping. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:01, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

The existing translation was an unreadable jumble of words with no line breaks. This is not how it appears in the referenced source, so I made a best effort attempt to clean it up and make it understandable for interested readers. I did not alter any of the wording. If someone with more experience can improve on this it would be great, I just think it’s important to have a copy of the translation here that is actually readable.

Keypusher (talk) 05:47, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

That was pretty obvious, but I thought I'd add a bit I found. I'm still not sure who he is, but it's not a translation. He thinks it's a sort of shorthand, eg that Boy Store Bread" should be written out as "The boy went to the store and bought some bread". Doug Weller talk 09:27, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

The feature at Medievalists.net by Selwood 2023 (direct link) contains several rather serious inaccuracies.

For example, Selwood regards the critical edition of the Emerald Tablet in Steele & Singer 1928, which is based on eight different manuscripts (see Steele & Singer 1928 p. 46/490), as a "transcription" of only one manuscript, MS Arundel 164. This leads him to the conclusion that Steele & Singer's 'transcription' "contains material errors". But as a critical edition Steele & Singer's text contains readings from other manuscripts, which renders the resulting text different from MS Arundel 164: this is of course a feature, not a bug.

Also, for some reason Selwood doesn't perceive that Mandosio 2004b (pp. 691–692) is simply a (duly cited and explicitly attributed) copy of Steele & Singer's 1928 critical edition. Instead, Selwood regards it as yet another 'transcription' containing 'errors' (as compared to MS Arundel 164).

Finally, Selwood seems not to realize that the 'Vulgate' version of the Tablet in Steele & Singer's 1928 is part of an Arabic collection of alchemical commentaries variously called Liber dabessi, Liber Hermetis de alchimia or Liber rebis (see Mandosio 2004b, p. 683). Steele & Singer 1928 p. 41/485 mention that it is "a translation made, probably early in the twelfth century, from an Arabic collection of explanations and commentaries on [...] the Emerald Table". Mandosio 2004b pp. 683–684 confirms that it is Latin translation of an Arabic commentary on the Tablet, adding that this version ultimately goes back on an Arabic commentary tradition taking the Sirr al-khalīqa/De secretis nature as its basis (though the translation is independent from the Latin translation of the Sirr al-khalīqa made by Hugo of Santalla).

Now Selwood casually declares the Vulgate version edited by Steele & Singer as part of the Liber dabessi to be translated from the Sirr al-asrār/Secretum Secretorum (which he also misleadingly calls "a text thought to have been written by Plato’s student, Aristotle", apparently ignoring that this text is pseudo-Aristotelian), even though it is clearly very different from the actual version of the Tablet in the Secretum Secretorum. Selwood was likely confused by the fact that Albertus Magnus in his De mineralibus names the Vulgate version of the Tablet from the Liber dabessi as Secretum secretissimorum Hermetis, but as Caiazzo 2004 p. 702 notes, Albertus Magnus probably took this name from one ms. of the Liber dabessi which also uses it and in any case Albertus did not even know the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum at the time he wrote the De mineralibus (Steele & Singer, Mandosio, and Caiazzo all say that Albertus was using the version of the Liber dabessi; the name is simply a red herring that likely confused Selwood).

On top of all this it should be noted that Selwood 2023 is equivalent to a self-published source, and that he in no way is an expert on alchemy (see also his article here), which would render Selwood 2023 an unreliable source by Wikipedia's standards.

In other words, though it may perhaps be helpful to note in our article that Selwood published a transcription of Arundel MS 164 (not a 'corrected' one obviously), he should probably not be used for anything else. If there should be anything of interest in Selwood 2023, please look it up in more reliable sources and cite those instead. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:46, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

The 2022 Spanish animated film Tad, the Lost Explorer and the Emerald Tablet (and its video game and its musical play) features an emerald tablet as the macguffin. However I have not found reliable sources about how the tablet is related to this tablet. -- Error (talk) 17:13, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

As it stands this article de facto requires decent knowledge of the Arabic language to so much as appreciate the textual variants introduced here, moreover the cited translation in Rosenthal 1975 is not just based on Ruska 1926 with the issues elaborated on in the article it is also just not very useful for appreciating differences in these variants beginning with translation opening on a non-existent "hadha" and running all through the text. As I've seen in the history @Apaugasma once added a copyrighted translation and though obviously the copyright status of that is a problem the basic idea I think is very necessary to preserve utility for non-Arabic speakers in the article. So my proposal is putting something like this literal translation next to the Arabic text to make a non-Arabic speaker appreciate a little more what's going on:

"(a) truth; no doubt [it] is true,
indeed, the uppermost is from the lowermost and the lowermost is from the uppermost,
[it] worked the wonders from one, [just] as all things come from one by means of one plan/with one considered act,
[its] father is the sun, [its] mother is the moon,
the wind carried [it] in her womb, the earth fed [it],
father of talismans, keeper of wonders, perfect in power,
fire became earth, I separate the earth from the fire,
the soft/delicate/gentle is more noble than the crude/rough/unintelligent,
with gentle-being and wisdom [it] ascends from the earth to the heaven and descends to the earth from the heaven,
and in [it] is the power of the uppermost and the lowermost,
since with [it] is the light of lights therefore the darkness escapes (away) from [it],
power of powers
it prevails over everything soft/delicate/gentle, enters into everything crude/rough/unintelligent,
against the creation of the macrocosm the work was created,
this is my renown and therefore I am named Hermes the threefold with the wisdom.

• Arabic just has two genders and this grammatically male so [it] can also be [he]"

I've seen you put a lot of care in having this article well cited so I won't unilaterally put a translation like this in if you don't think it benefits the article more than it hurts it. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 03:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow Bari' bin Farangi, that's a great literal transliteration! The reason why I did not provide a translation myself is that I'm concerned that translating a primary source, and such an esoteric source which has baffled scholars at that, would fall afoul of WP:NOR. That policy does state that faithfully translating sourced material into English, or transcribing spoken words from audio or video sources, is not considered original research. However, it also states that any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation, and do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. It would be hard to argue that a translation of a text like the Emerald Tablet would not constitute an interpretation, but if it is an interpretation, we would of course have no secondary source to back that interpretation up.

Now you may argue that your translation tries to be as literal as possible, and being somewhat of an expert on the Emerald Tablet I can confirm that your translation is indeed both reasonably accurate and very literal. There are some things which from my own original research I know to be inaccurate and which I know should be translated differently, but I won't mention these precisely because I don't want to infuse this article with my own original research. Points that I can mention because they do not involve interpretation are the following:

• ٱعزِل should be translated as an imperative "separate". This can be easily deduced from the Latin translations, sc. Hugo of Santalla's "eam ex igne subtili [...] educite", the Secretum secretorum's "Separa terrenum ab igneo", and the Nuremberg 1541's "separabis terram ab igne", all of which have imperatives.
• لطيف and غليظ are generally translated by scholars with "subtle" and "gross" respectively (cf. Newton's translation of the vulgate; Holmyard 1927's translation of Jabir's version; Steele & Singer 1928's translation of the Liber dabessi's version), so it's probably better to just stick to that.

In the end, even though I have my concerns about OR, I won't oppose adding an editorial translation, assuming that you yourself have not been engaged in original research regarding the Emerald Tablet. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 04:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

For ٱعزِل I assumed to have been supposed to be أعزِل based on it not being preceded by a vowel, if (as you correctly checked again) it is ٱعزِل in the source (however phonetically doubtful that may seem) the kasre of the imperative i3zil being swallowed by the alef al wasl would make both internally for the text and based on the translations and other versions the most sense, thus I would probably go with something like "separate" or "separate (directed at a male reader)" for the translation. I tried not to look at other translations except of course the English Mamorstein translation of the German Rosenthal one, which read very differently from the original text and thus was what motivated me to start editing the article. I had no prior familiarity with the subject beyond a glance at this article prior, as I always put off reading about this subject. Thus when producing my translation in fear of introducing interpretive elements that go beyond what's there, I tried to give a broad range of meanings for latif and ghaliz as they are of course extremely broad terms and the context in the text doesn't clearly imply a person or a thing at first glance. In the end my goal wasn't to produce a particularly readable or insightful text, just one that illustrates to an English language reader roughly what grammatically exists/doesn't exist in this Arabic text. I too have my concerns regarding NOR but given the lack of linguistic complexity in the source (most of the ambiguity seems to be concerned with the telos of what is written there, not what is there if that makes sense) I purposely left open all the kinds of decisions that would make the text nicer to read and would advance a particular vocabulary choice as more likely etc. I too would prefer a well cited maybe a little more readable but yet faithful translation in the article but given that this seemingly doesn't exist the choice between confronting potentially monolingual reader with a wall of text that is either meaningless at first glance and thus ignored or meaningless at second glance after trying to put it into a machine translation program and thus ignored, I would prefer to have something there. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 05:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Given the way you and I have collaborated on this, and given how we with our different backgrounds kind of provide a check & balance for each other, I think this is a case where we can ignore all rules and improve Wikipedia by having it feature this editorial translation. It will indeed be enormously helpful to readers. Thanks again, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 09:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

• Compact vs short: The source cited states: "though merely one paragraph long". Compact does not relate to length but density. I have not found a source that calls it compact. Therefore compact should be replaced with short.

• So-called: There is no surviving tablet, if there ever was one, let alone one made of emerald. As the article states, emerald comes from its association with Hermes. However many publications show an actual emerald tablet on the cover, giving the impression such a tablet exists. Hence I'd argue using so-called is warranted.

• Smaragdine Tablet as altname: It was rather uncommon the past decades, and is on par with several other version that are not mentioned either. Ngram comparison:

Hypnôs (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll address these points one by one:

• Principe (2013) pp. 31–32 does mention that the Tablet is one paragraph long, but he also mentions that this one paragraph covers various topics such as the relationship between the celestial world (the macrocosm, “that which is above”) and the terrestrial world (the microcosm, “that which is below”), monism, an unclear "it" which historically was believed to be the Philosophers' Stone, as well as perhaps secret information about how to prepare that precious substance, and other other topics which are less clear such as the Sun and Moon which may be references to Dry and wet principles. The Microcosm–macrocosm analogy, monism, the philosophers' stone, and elementary theory (dry and wet principles were regarded as building blocks of elements), all in one paragraph: I think that's pretty dense, and "compact" seems a fair description for that.
• Yes, the article should make it clear from the start that it's a text, not an actual tablet. I'm not sure whether this is not already the case in the current revision. If clarification is needed, however, using "so-called" is not the way to do it, because that term is ambiguous. Probably the best way would be to include a summary in the lead of the Secret of Creation's origin story about Apollonius of Tyana entering an underground vault below a statue of Hermes and finding the tablet in the hands of an old corpse on a golden throne, which should make it clear that it's a legend.
• "Smaragdine Tablet" on Google Scholar still produces 147 results. For people who read these sources and search Wikipedia for Smaragdine Tablet, having the altname in the lead confirms that they arrived on the right page. That to me seems enough to mention it in the lead as a mos:altname, but of course opinions may vary.

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the thorough response.

I agree with your first two points, and that better additions could clarify the issues.

On the third point, Emerald Table (762) and Smaragdine Table (175) have both more hits on google scholar than Smaragdine Tablet. Hypnôs (talk) 22:28, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

That's good to know. Still, "Smaragdine" seems to see some significant use, and my guess is that people who look for "Emerald Table" or "Smaragdine Table" and land on an article called "Emerald Tablet" which also mentions "Smaragdine Tablet" in the lead will likely be assured that they landed on the right page. This is one of the primary functions of the lead sentence.

Perhaps even better though would be to change Smaragdine Tablet in the lead to Smaragdine Table: this way we both have a more widely attested form and confirm that "Table" is also in use. I went ahead and made that change. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:43, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Alright, good compromise. Hypnôs (talk) 22:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The current lead image is a 17th century artist's impression and certainly not how the tablet looked like. As such, it seems to be primarily decorative and has little encyclopedic value as the lead image, and might even mislead people not reading the description.

Perhaps an alternative can be agreed upon, or maybe having no lead image is the better option, per MOS:LEADIMAGE. Hypnôs (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The current caption very clearly says it's an imaginative depiction, and since it's a few centuries old it clearly illustrates the notability of the topic per MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. Given this, I don't really see a problem. However, there of course has never been any real tablet (it's a textual fiction), and since this might be misleading to some people I'm also not against not having a lead image. I guess I'm neutral on this one. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:28, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The assertion that this object A exists and B is made of green glass comes down entirely to Steele & Singer 1927 p. 488. It is followed up by an additionally uncited on its face ridiculous and nonsensical etymology of zaradi (they cite Ruska 1926 p. 114 which isn't about zaradi but a possible etymology of sarab lair and its relation to sardāb lair, zaradi being spelled with a Gothic z ie ꝣaradi is not a good argument for the confusion between s and z, especially because Ruska provides a correct etymology on p. 218 one wonders if Steele and Singer actually read or merely skimmed his work) this etymology somehow still gets proliferated by blogs such as this one https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/great-moments-in-hermeticism-ibn-umayls-visit-to-a-temple-of-imhotep ... The most concise resource I have found to investigate this claim is this article by Mata, which tries to argue (very unconvincingly imo) that this treasure also featured in night 272 of 1001 nights may have been a real object. The textual history however helps cement the case against including this object in the wiki article. Here is a rough summary of the extant descriptions of this object:

It's made of pure emerald and gold, it's a Biblical object belonging to Solomon, it's REALLY valuable (200k dinars are 850kg of pure gold worth around 100 Million USD today), it's massive either in size (having 365 legs) or weight 365 رطل so between 80kg and 1200kg. Then it is also accompanied by an equally priceless onyx tablet also it's not just inlaid with emeralds but also pearls and jacinth stones (though this account makes part of it silver). It's traced to random figures of Roman history who supposedly took it from the Jerusalem Temple and then later revised as a lectern used by the Visigoths by more skeptical chroniclers.

https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/71278/1/1980_Rubiera_Awraq.pdf

Given this entertaining textual history I think it's fair to say that this object isn't well attested enough to be featured as a real historical object in this article. In fact, it makes our emerald tablet sound almost tame in comparison... Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 11:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

This representation is making the strongest case for the Iberian Solomonic Table btw its a common feature of Arthurian legend and commonly tossed into a cave alongside the Holy Grail and two other holy cups... Actually, one could consider cutting the glass section entirely! Steele & Singer clearly had some misguided idea that there could have been a physical object to represent the Emerald Tablet but ancient people not differentiating geodes like we do today or Medieval relic legends inventing wonderful descriptions for fairly unremarkable items aren't strong evidence of anything. The visigothic emerald tablet also serves as a counter argument against ANY physical emerald tablet: here we have a theme of Arabic literature from around the time of the Secret of Creation, connected to an ancient magical sage (Solomon) which is made of emerald and quite literally unbelievable in its physical composition and provenience... The Sacro Catino turning out to be glass of little material economic value also was a huge scandal, which additionally counters Steele & Singer's point: There would have been no scandal, if the bowl were made of any even slightly valuable material instead of the stuff beer bottles are made of. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

@Apaugasma You're absolutely correct about izafe regarding the current Arabic phrase we quote and I was just remembering that in the first occurrence in the frame story it's indefinite without double checking that's the text we actually quote, but now I looked up both versions in Weisser 1979 and in the first p 7 it's لوح من زبرجد with Weisser relegating zumurrudh to a footnote variant and in the second occurence p 524 it's اللوح الذي كان من الزمرذ which leads me to my question: From where are we taking this Arabic title with so many variants might it be more prudent to actually leave out this footnote or alter it significantly? Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 15:21, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

As the current reference says, it's taken from p. 281 (line 4). This is in the middle of book 3 on minerals, in a passage about transmuting ruby into emerald and emerald into ruby, where Balinus says that he learned how to perform such transmutations (he also gives the examples of transmuting silver into gold and copper into silver) "through what was written on the tablet of emerald that was in the hand of Hermes Trismegistus in the dark lair that was under the column", i.e., that "their origin is from one thing" (cf. عمل العجائب من واحد كما كانت الأشياء كلّها من واحد).

This passage has at times (I can't remember by whom now) been regarded as an interpolation, but in any case it is a direct comment on the text of the Tablet. Back when I first introduced an Arabic version of the name to the article, I chose this passage simply because "lawḥ al-zumurrudh" is less cumbersome than "lawḥ min zabarjad akhḍar" (p. 7) or "al-lawḥ alladhī kāna min al-zumurrudh" (p. 524).

I think it's nice to note that already in the Arabic sources the text was known as 'the tablet of emerald', but it's based on a primary source and not really essential to the article, so if you want you can remove it. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:53, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

A. Parrot in their GA review has suggested removing Newton's translation from the lead. In the past this translation served as a quick introduction to the actual text, but now that the article again does feature the different text recensions from the very beginning of the article (remember that after the insertion of the translated French article there used to be four very large history sections before the first actual version of the text was shown), I agree that it's better to remove the Newton translation from the lead. Not because it's redundant (I don't think it is) or unusual for a lead section (that should not be a problem in my view), but because I think it's less than ideal to have such a late and transfigured version as a first introduction to readers.

For these reasons and per the GA review I will replace the translation in the lead with a sentence about it (the fact that Newton translated it is of course in itself lead-notable), and move the translation to a footnote for the time being. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:57, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

The confusing sentence is mostly a leftover from the translated French article with the subsequent explanations being my attempt to make it more comprehensible. I do agree that the paragraph is itself quasi-surrealist, so I will make it a lot less broad and proabably relegate some things to the footnotes but I am super busy atm so Monday is likely the soonest I’ll be able to! Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 19:58, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

No problem. I don't know that I would go so far as to call that paragraph "quasi-surrealist", but it does sound very French. A. Parrot (talk) 21:22, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Although moving the stranger passages in the paragraph into the footnotes certainly makes the body text more comprehensible, I don't see why the text in the first two of those footnotes needs to be here at all. Breton's thought is only relevant to this article insofar as it's connected to the Emerald Tablet, not to Hermeticism in general (let alone Hegelianism). A. Parrot (talk) 05:03, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I mostly kept them around to show what form his interest took—like in his case it wasn't personal occultist beliefs or a psychological reading of the Hermetica but a marxist-hegelian quasi-prisca theologia (very comparable to Lunacharsky's approach to Goethe) but I do agree that it isn't strictly necessary to get the grift and also none of the footnotes were willing to synthesise as much as I am in this comment. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 07:13, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

There are some mistakes in the translations. Newton misspelled the word meditation. Instead, he wrote "mediation" which is not a correct translation for the Arabic word "tadbeer". The phrase "عمل العجائب من واحد" in verse 2 is also mistranslated. It means "wonders worked from one" and not "it worked the wonders from one". Lajevard2025 (talk) 15:22, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Newton translated from an unknown Latin version that strongly resembled the Vulgate version, not from one of the Arabic versions. Either Newton's Latin version already had changed (through scribal error or through amendation) the Vulgate's meditatione (itself a translation of the Arabic tadbīr) to mediatione, or Newton himself decided that mediatione is a better reading (see textual criticism). It would be nice to write something about these changes, but I'm not aware of a reliable source that comments on this (it may well exist, so if you find something please let me know!). Since on Wikipedia we only report what reliable sources write (see wp:or), all we can do for now is to show Newton's translation as is, without commentary.

As for your comment on the editorial translation of the Secret of Creation's version, "[it] worked the wonders from one" is a possible translation if عمل in the Arabic text is read as an active verb (ʿamila al-ʿajāʾib min wāḥid). Another possible translation, if عمل is read nominally as ʿamalu l-ʿajāʾib min wāḥid, is "the work[ing] of wonders is from one". Are you perhaps referring to a third possible translation where عمل is read as a passive verb (ʿumila l-ʿajāʾib min wāḥid), yielding "the wonders were worked from one"? I don't think, however, that this reading is possible, since ʿajāʾib as a non-personal plural would require a feminine verb form (ʿumilat l-ʿajāʾib)? Or were you referring to something else still? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Excuse the OR based on personal observations and this wouldn't go in the article like this, but I would like to add per word order, a nominal reading here is exceedingly unlikely. Whenever a verb is present in our text, the author puts it first (save نارٌ صارت أرضًا, which itself admits صارت النارُ أرضًا) — similarly most sentences in the Secret of Creation lead with the verb. If there’s a verb in our clause, it should lead. And if عَمَل were a maṣdar of purpose, we’d expect لِـ; without it, the line feels clipped. Copular support would also be needed for a true nominal sentence. So while not incorrect in the same way that I would say a passive reading here would be incorrect, it would be stylistically very odd. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 19:16, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean with copular support? As the article you linked to mentions, "in the present tense, there is no overt copula in Arabic. In such clauses, the subject tends to precede the predicate". As I currently see it (on the basis of my reading experience; I've read a lot of classical Arabic but I'm not a grammar buff), on purely grammatical grounds a nominal sentence should be just as likely as a verbal one. Since I personally believe on meaning-related grounds (in the context of my own original research on the subject) that it actually is a nominal sentence, I would be very interested to know that—and why— this should be grammatically unlikely. Just in case you're curious too, I believe it likely that عمل العجائب renders something like θαυματουργία (which Apollonius had a reputation for), and also that this 'wonder working' may correspond with the 'work' in the second-to-last line. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:45, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

This largley comes down to intuition hence the initial apology, but even in zero copula sentences writers will often (but don't have to) deploy other cues (hence "support") to indicate a particular reading when there is ambiguity. Here I would argue we have a local parallelism with كما + a verb (كانت) which to me would make a nominal-verbal parallelism less likely on stylistic grounds than a verb-verb parallelism. So to me this makes the verbal reading more likely and there is no sort of alternative cue in the structure to support the nominal reading but assuming the author of the text is working with sources in another language and some amount of translation is involved in crafting this text these considerations are frankly out of the window. I did not consider any readings more likely based on sort of external factors and don't think I am qualified to make such calls, so if you have a particular reading which externally makes more sense with a nominal that could very well be a good enough cue against the idea of a local parallelism. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 21:08, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I see what you mean, and your explanation answers my concerns. . ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:21, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

It seems that this sentence has a hidden (mustatir) subject. It is talking about God's miracles? I am translating its text to Persian and I have problem with this weird sentence! Lajevard2025 (talk) 12:14, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

If you read it as a verb, it has a male hidden subject pronoun. Who or what this is about is unclear which means in all likelihood اون is your best choice, because this could be about God, could be about the Son (thinking about the Discourse of Poimandres to Hermes Trismegistus), it could mean a talisman, could mean an alchemical object so by picking u or an you'd need to make an editorial decision which goes beyond what one can be certain of. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 15:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Something like "اون شگفتی‌ها را از یکی به‌جا می‌آورد؛ چنان‌که همهٔ اشیا به تدبیر از یکی پدید آمدند" should do the trick. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 15:31, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

You are right. I thought it was a passive verb!But it is impossible since the word Ajäib is feminine so the verb must have the same gender. Therefore, i agree with you in this case. Lajevard2025 (talk) 12:07, 16 September 2025 (UTC)