182 CHAPTER SIX
however, plays a double game: he skirts the article of faith and at the
same time consolidates it. By Maimonides’ time, the resurrection of the
dead was assumed by most Jews to constitute an integral element of
the Jewish faith, but Maimonides played an active and decisive role in
upgrading it to a binding article of faith.^99 The tenth- century Saadya, for
example, who discusses the resurrection at length in the seventh chapter
of his Book of Creeds and Beliefs, does not mention the resurrection in
any of his lists of articles of faith.^100 In the twelfth century, the Karaite
Judah Hadassi counted resurrection as the eighth article of faith in his
list of basic elements of belief (ishur), but there is no indication that he
presented these articles as a legally binding Jewish dogma.^101 As noted
above, in instituting a list of legally binding dogmas that defi ne the
boundaries of Judaism, Maimonides followed the example of the Almo-
hads. In the case of this par ticular article, he also followed the example
of the Almohads’ source of inspiration, Ghazali, who counted the denial
of resurrection as one of the marks of the phi losophers’ heresy.^102 By in-
cluding this belief in his credo, Maimonides canonized it as belonging to
the basic Jewish creed, in conformity with what was universally accepted
at the time as a mark of religiosity among Jews, Christians, and Moslems
alike. If, as argued here, his philosophy did not support this belief, why
did he canonize it?
Paradoxically, it is precisely Maimonides’ philosophical background
that suggested to him the defi nition of the resurrection as an article of
faith (and only as an article of faith). Like Avicenna and Averroes, Mai-
monides adopted the position that the eschatological scene is dictated by
the texts and should not be interpreted. By making this position into an
article of faith, he relegated it to the “not- to-be-discussed-rationally”
compartment.^103 Maimonides seems to have felt that by classifying the
resurrection as a legally binding dogma, he established his credentials, as
it were; in fact, he explicitly says that this is what he felt. The fact that he
was pushed to repeat his credentials was for him a superfl uous repeti-
tion, which he could not but resent. As his Treatise on Resurrection
shows, forcing him to repeat did not bring him to elaborate. He could
(^99) It is thus technically inaccurate to say that Maimonides reinterpreted the thirteenth ar-
ticle of faith, an article that he himself created; cf. Friedberg, “Maimonides’ Reinterpreta-
tion of the Thirteenth Article.”
(^100) See H. Ben- Shammai, “Saadia Gaon’s Ten Articles of Faith,” Daat 37 (1996): 21
[Hebrew].
(^101) See D. Lasker, “The Philosophy of Judah Hadassi the Karaite,” Jerusalem Studies in
Jewish Thought 7 (1988): 479 and note 9 [Hebrew].
(^102) See note 11, above.
(^103) On Maimonides’ distinction between rational knowledge and belief, see chap. 3, note
77, above.