Arthur Ernest Cowley

“ The doctrine that there is a material, as well as a formal, element in all created beings was explicitly adopted from Avicebron by Duns Scotus (as against the view of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas) , and perhaps his exaltation of the will above the intellect is due to the same influence. Avicebron develops his philosophical system throughout quite independently of his religious views—a practice wholly foreign to Jewish teachers, and one which could not be acceptable to them. ”

“ Its distinctive doctrines are: (1) that all created beings, spiritual or corporeal, are composed of matter and form, the various species of matter being but varieties of the universal matter, and similarly all forms being contained in one universal form; (2) that between the primal One and the intellect (the νοῦς of Plotinus) there is interposed the divine Will, which is itself divine and above the distinction of form and matter, but is the cause of their union in the being next to itself, the intellect, in which Avicebron holds that the distinction does exist. ”

“ It is as a poet that he has been known to the Jews to the present day, and admired for the youthful freshness and beauty of his work, in which he may be compared to the romantic school in France and England in the early 19th century. Besides his lyrical and satirical poems, he contributed many of the finest compositions to the liturgy (some of them with the acrostic “Shelomoh ha-qaṭōn”) , which are widely different from the artificial manner of the earlier payyeṭanim. ”