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But there is not the same evidence in the earlier writings of Isaac Israeli, Saadia, Joseph Ibn Zaddik, Gabirol, Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Judah Halevi. They had picked up Aristotelian ideas and principles, but they had also absorbed ideas and concepts from other schools, Greek as well as Arabian, and unconsciously combined the two.
All that is known of the life of Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda is that he lived in Spain and had the office of "Dayyan," or judge of the Jewish community. Not even the exact time in which he lived is yet determined, though the most reliable recent investigations make it probable that he lived after Gabirol and was indebted to the latter for some of his views in philosophy as well as in Ethics.
He does not seem to favor the atomic theory, but he devotes no special treatment to the subject, and in his arguments for creation as opposed to eternity he makes use of the Kalamistic concepts of substance and accident and composition and division. The same is true of Bahya Ibn Pakuda.
The process in both systems is explained by use of analogies, those of the radiation of light from a luminous body, and of the overflowing of a fountain being the most common. The chief exponent of the ethics of the Sufis in mediæval Jewish literature is Bahya Ibn Pakuda.
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