VI

Introduction.

...adopted [the text] and, rather than translating, he instead slavishly imitated it, dressing it in a quite harsh and obscure Hebrew.^1

Although Munk placed a French translation alongside the Hebrew text with explanatory notes, it would undoubtedly have been more fruitful—and likely of greater interest to every non-Jewish researcher—to have promoted the printing of the Latin translation of the Source of Life original Latin: Fons vitae. This translation was prepared in the middle of the twelfth century from an Arabic original by the converted Jew Johannes Avendehut Also known as John of Seville, a prolific translator who collaborated with Christian scholars in Toledo. with the assistance of Archdeacon Dominicus Gundisalvi A philosopher and translator influential in bringing Arabic and Jewish thought to the Latin West.. Munk himself made extensive use of an admittedly very flawed copy of this Latin translation, both to establish the text of those Hebrew excerpts (of which he only had a single manuscript) and to develop a detailed analysis of the Source of Life, which was intended to supplement and complete the excerpts made by Falaquera Shem-Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera, a Spanish-Jewish philosopher whose summaries preserved many lost works.. Based on another, far superior copy, Seyerlen published a comprehensive presentation of the system of the Source of Life at the same time Munk's edition appeared, interwoven with rich textual citations and differing significantly from Munk's analysis in several places.^2

Later, Munk returned to the sources from which Ibn Gabirol Salomon Ibn Gabirol, known to the Latin world as Avicebron, was an 11th-century Andalusian poet and philosopher. drew, and simultaneously conducted a discussion of the traces that the Source of Life left in Jewish and Christian speculation of the Middle Ages.^3

Before this, M. Joel had already dedicated a special investigation to the relationships between Ibn Gabirol and Plotinus A major Hellenistic philosopher and the father of Neoplatonism. (which Munk had also emphasized), declaring the Source of Life to be a "textbook of Neoplatonic philosophy" drawn in all essential aspects from Plotinus’s Enneads The primary collection of Plotinus's teachings..^4

1 original French: Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, première livraison, Paris 1857 Miscellany of Jewish and Arabic Philosophy, first installment, Paris 1857.
2 Avicebron, original Latin: De materia uniuersali (Fons uitae) On Universal Matter (Source of Life). A Contribution to the History of Medieval Philosophy: Theological Yearbooks, edited by F. Chr. Baur and E. Zeller. Vol. 1856, pp. 486—544; Vol. 1857, pp. 109—146. 258—295. 332—381.
3 original French: Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, Paris 1859, p. 233—306 Miscellany of Jewish and Arabic Philosophy, Paris 1859, pp. 233—306.
4 Ibn Gabirol's (Avicebron's) Significance for the History of Philosophy: in Z. Frankel's Monthly for the History and Science of [Judaism] The title likely concludes with "Judentums" (of Judaism), which is truncated in the original text.