In his Middle Commentary to Aristotle's De Anima, Averroes stayed close to Aristotle's own conception, and that of the interpretive tradition of his writings, regarding the nature and powers of the soul. However, he refrained from discussing a central aspect of Aristotle's doctrine of the soul, namely, the nature of the human intellect and its relationship to the Active Intellect, nor does he discuss the eternity of the soul. Notwithstanding the neglect of this commentary by Muslim thinkers, to the point that almost all no copies of it have survived in Arabic, and its disregard by Christian scholars, it was the focus of great interest among Jewish readers. In the mid-thirteenth century it was translated twice into Hebrew, by the famous translator Moses ibn Tibbon, whose translation forms the backbone of this edition, and by Shem Tov ben Yitzhak of Tortosa.