  The role of Ibn Gabirol is indeed pivotal. Ibn Gabirol was accused by his contemporaries, and credited by modern scholars, with introducing “Greek” notions into his poetry. All the great Andalusian poets were to some degree—Ibn Ezra, quite substantially—students and imitators of Ibn Gabirol. The link between Ibn Ezra and Ibn Gabirol is significant, but the common thread running between the two, and other Andalusian Jewish poets as well who plunged into “the mysterious depths of Neoplatonism”, is to be found in their poetry, rather than in prose expositions of philosophy. The soul’s longing for release from this world and liberation, or obliteration, in the divine, are themes which found powerful expression in their liturgies, and which bond them to at least one important facet of neoplatonism and to each other more truly than any specific doctrines that they may hold concerning the origin of matter or the nature of prophetic inspiration.