While still a young man he was compelled to debate in public, on original sin and redemption, with Cardinal Pedro de Luna, afterward Antipope Benedict XIII. This disputation took place in Pamplona, December 26, 1375, in the presence of bishops and learned theologians. A devastating war which raged in Navarre between the Castilians and the English obliged Ibn Shaprut, with many others, to leave the country. He settled at Tarazona, in Aragon, where he practised his profession of physician among both Jews and Christians. As a Talmudic scholar he carried on a correspondence with Sheshet.
Works and editions
''The Touchstone''
At Tarazona he completed his Eben Boḥan, a polemical work against baptized Jews. As a model and guide for this work, which consists of fourteen chapters, or "gates," and is written in the form of a dialogue, he took the polemical Sefer Milhamot Adonai of Jacob ben Reuben, falsely attributed to David Ḳimḥi. Ibn Shaprut's work, however, is not a partial reproduction of the Milḥamot, as has been incorrectly stated ; it is rather an extension or continuation of it, since it goes into details which are either not mentioned, or are mentioned only briefly, in the other. In the fifteenth chapter, which Ibn Shaprut added later, he criticizes a work written by Alfonso do Valladolid against Jacob ben Reuben. The thirteenth chapter contains a very interesting fragment by a 14th-century Schopenhauer, who wrote under the pseudonym "Lamas". The Eben Boḥan has been preserved in several manuscripts. As part of The Touchstone in order to assist the Jews in defense against conversion and polemical writings, Ibn Shaprut edited or translated portions of the Four Gospels into Hebrew, accompanying them with pointed observations; answers to the latter, written by a neophyte named Jona, also exist in manuscript.
''En Kol''
Ibn Shaprut wrote a commentary to the first book of Avicenna's canon entitled "En Kol," on music for which he probably made use of the Hebrew translation of Sulaiman ibn Yaish and that of Allorqui, which later he criticizes severely.
''The Exposer of Mysteries''
He also wrote a super commentary, entitled "Ẓafnat Pa'aneaḥ," to Ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch.
''The Orchard of Pomegranates''
One work of Ibn Shaprut has been printed: "Pardes Rimmonim," The Orchard of Pomegranates explanations of difficult Talmudic aggadot
Shem-Tob's Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is not a separate translation, and almost certainly not actually by Ibn Shaprut himself, but a complete commentary, in Hebrew, on the gospel of Matthew found in The Touchstone. On the basis that it probably constitutes an earlier independent text, it has been excised and edited as a separate edition by George Howard, Hebrew Gospel of Matthew In 1879 the German orientalist Adolf Herbst published two other Jewish Hebrew translations of Matthew, also used by Italian and Spanish Jews to combat attempts to conversion, as Des Schemtob ben Schaphrut hebraeische Übersetzung des Evangeliums Matthaei nach den Drucken des S. Münster und J. du Tillet-Mercier neu herausgegeben.. However these two manuscripts have no direct connection to Ibn Shaprut. They are a Spanish manuscript published and heavily edited by the cartographer Sebastian Münster and a related Italian Jewish manuscript purchased by Bishop Jean du Tillet and published by the Hebraist Jean Mercier.
