orbis from the Latin translation which was itself derived from the Arabic. To a great extent the Hebrew and Latin translations were being made contemporaneously but quite independently; it was not until well into the 14th century that they begin to influence one another. It was during this later stage that so many of the Arabic philosophical works were translated into Latin via Hebrew, and this gave a marked preponderance to Ibn Rushd, the result of the Jewish vogue of his writings; the earlier translations into Latin from the Arabic rather tend to lay weight on Ibn Sina.
In the course of the 14th century A.D. the Hebrew commentators on Ibn Rushd begin. Chief amongst these was Lavi ben Gerson, of Bagnols, who wrote a commentary on Ibn Rushd's Ittisal on the doctrine of the union of the soul with the Agent Intelligence, and on Ibn Rushd's treatise "on the substance of the world." Levi's teaching reproduces the Arabic Aristotelianism much more freely and frankly than was ventured by Maimonides; he admits the eternity of the world, the primal matter he describes as substance without form, and creation meant only the impress of form on this formless substance.
Contemporary with Levi was Moses of Narbonne, who, between 1340 and 1350, produced commentaries on the same works of Ibn Rushd as had already been treated by Levi, as well as other of the treatises on physical science.
The fourteenth century was the golden age of
