ABSTRACT
After sketching the nature, origin, and doctrines of the corpus of medieval Arabic pseudepigraphical works known as the Plotiniana Arabica, this chapter focuses on the doctrines, characteristic of these writings, that the First Principle creates by its being alone and that it does so instantaneously. Attempting to identify the problems to which these ideas were intended to provide a solution, I then argue, contrary to the scholarly communis opinio, that they can be traced back to the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 234–ca. 310 CE).
