On scientific grounds, Albalag dismisses the doctrine of temporal origination as “defective” and accepts the eternal existence of the universe as an indisputable truth (we will see below that he accepts the former on the authority of Scripture). Albalag, however, attempts to present the Aristotelian theory of eternity and its fundamental premises in a theologically appealing fashion. Thus, he introduces the theory of “eternal origination” (ḥidūsh neṣaḥi) which maintains that “there was no moment