  Shem-Tov Falaquera sought to interest his fellow Jews in philosophy and science and to make available to them in Hebrew the most important teachings of the ancient Greek and medieval Islamic philosophers. As is clear from his encyclopedia of science, he was an Aristotelian, and like virtually all post-Maimonidean Jewish Aristotelians, his two leading philosophic authorities were Averroes and Maimonides. Nonetheless, he had an open mind and seems to have been influenced also by Neoplatonic writings. This is most evident from his decision to prepare Hebrew versions of Ibn Gabirol’s Fons vitae and Pseudo-Empedocles’ Five Substances, and from his many citations from Ibn Gabirol in his Moreh ha-Moreh (see Shiffman’s intro., 83–85). He knew the works of the Islamic falâsifah better than any Jewish thinker of his time, and made many of them available to the Hebrew reader – often without attribution (as in Reshit Hokhmah); yet he was not hesitant to modify unobtrusively their texts when it suited his purposes. In this way, for example, he turned Alfarabi’s account of the origin of philosophic religion into a discussion of the origin of the virtuous city (Harvey, “Falaquera’s Alfarabi,” 104–109).