Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebron)

The hinge of this whole wing — poet of Málaga and Zaragoza, whose Hebrew liturgical verse is still sung in synagogue, and whose philosophical Mekor Chayyim ("Fountain of Life") is pure Neoplatonism with the divine WILL inserted between the One and everything else. Translated into Latin as the Fons Vitae, it circulated for centuries under the name "Avicebron," whom the Scholastics took for a Muslim or a Christian; Solomon Munk only identified him as the Jewish poet in 1846. His doctrine of Will as the first emanation stands directly behind Keter as *Ratzon*, the primal will — the Neoplatonic scheme already speaking Hebrew, a century before the Bahir.