Book of Causes

...[the author has] taken it and, rather than translating it, has slavishly imitated it, clothing it in a quite harsh and obscure Hebrew. 1

Although Munk provided a French translation alongside the Hebrew text, complete with explanatory notes, it would have been more fruitful without question, and it would have been more appropriate for every non-Jewish scholar, to have pushed for the publication of the Latin translation of the "Fountain of Life" original: "Lebensquelle", which was prepared around the middle of the twelfth century by the converted Jew Johannes Avendehut with the assistance of Archdeacon Dominicus Gundisalvi, based on the Arabic original. Munk himself made extensive use of a admittedly very deficient copy of this Latin translation, both to establish the text of those Hebrew excerpts—which were available to him only in a single manuscript—and to work out a detailed analysis of the "Fountain of Life" meant to supplement and complete Falaquera’s excerpts. Based on another, far superior copy, and appearing at the same time as Munk’s edition, Seyerlen provided a comprehensive presentation of the system of the "Fountain of Life," interwoven with rich citations from the text and differing from Munk's analysis multiple times and not insignificantly. 2

Subsequently, Munk returned to the sources from which Ibn Gabirol drew, and at the same time examined the traces that the "Fountain of Life" left behind in the Jewish and Christian speculation of the Middle Ages. 3

Prior to this, M. Joel had already dedicated a special study to the relationship between Ibn Gabirol and Plotinus—a relationship also emphasized by Munk—and declared the "Fountain of Life" to be a "textbook of Neoplatonic philosophy" drawn in all essential points from Plotinus's Enneads. 4