Page:A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy.djvu/138

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MEDIÆVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
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CHAPTER VI

BAHYA IBN PAKUDA

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. 106 So far as traditional data are concerned we have equally reliable, or rather equally unreliable statements for regarding Bahya as an older contem- porary of Gabirol (eleventh century), or of Abraham ibn Ezra (1088- 1167). Neither of these two data being vouched for by any but their respective authors, who lived a long time after Bahya, we are left to such indirect evidence as may be gathered from the content of Bahya's ethical work, the "Duties of the Hearts." And here the recent in- vestigations of Yahuda, the latest authority on this subject and the editor of the Arabic text of Bahya's masterpiece (1912), force upon us the conclusion that Bahya wrote after Gabirol. Yahuda has shown that many passages in the "Duties of the Hearts" are practically identical in content and expression with similar ideas found in a work of the Arab philosopher Gazali (1059-1111). This leaves very little doubt that Bahya borrowed from Gazali and hence could not have written before the twelfth century.

To be sure, there are arguments on the other side, which would give chronological priority to Bahya over Gabirol, 107 but without going into the details of this minute and difficult discussion, it may be said generally that many of the similarities in thought and expres- sion between the two ethical works of Gabirol and Bahya rather point in favor of the view here adopted, namely, that Bahya borrowed from Gabirol, while the rest prove nothing for either side. In so far as a reader of the "Duties of the Hearts" recognizes here and there an idea met with in Gabirol's "Fons Vitæ," there can scarcely be80

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