judaism without a temple 259
interpretation reflect contemporary trends within Islam from the last
centuries of the first millennium ce through to the high Middle Ages.
The disputations in Baghdad in the tenth century summarized in the
Book of Beliefs and Opinions of Saadiah Gaon took place in a relatively
open and philosophical atmosphere, although the Muslim accusation
that the Jews had falsified the text of the Bible in the time of Ezra, imag-
ining God in anthropomorphic terms, led Maimonides to forbid such
debates because of ‘their belief that this Torah was not given from
Heaven’. On the crucial issue of monotheism Jews and Muslims shared
a common approach in opposition to Christian belief in the Trinity.
Many Jewish thinkers were much attracted by the teachings of Islamic
scholasticism (kalam ), which began in the eighth century, about the
absolute unity and incorporeality of God, to whom no attributes may
be ascribed, and the perfection of divine justice. The vigour of Islamic
philosophy, which incorporated much from the philosophy and natural
sciences of the Greeks, especially Aristotle, was adopted by many Jewish
thinkers writing in Arabic in the Muslim world, not least in Muslim
Spain. Many of their works were in turn transmitted to the Jews of the
rest of Europe by extensive translations in the twelfth century from
Arabic to Hebrew by Abraham ibn Ezra, himself a great biblical com-
mentator, poet, grammarian, philosopher and astronomer. Over four
generations in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
the ibn Tibbon family translated into Hebrew numerous Arabic works
on philosophy, medicine, mathematics and astronomy as well as com-
mentaries on scripture.^27
Through such means Islamic philosophy was to transform much of
the theological discourse of Judaism in Christian Europe as well as in
the Islamic world in the first half of the second millennium ce, as we
shall see in Chapter 13. As Islam developed, so did Jewish adoption of
Islamic religious ideas. Hence, for instance, the influence of Sufism, the
mystical tradition within Islam which aimed at mystical union with
God through abstinence and incorporated many notions from Greek
Neoplatonism, on the pietistic Duties of the Heart of Bahya ibn Pakuda,
who wrote in Spain in the second half of the eleventh century and
quoted liberally from Sufi authors:
How is special abstinence to be defined and what need have followers of
the Torah for it? As to its definition, scholars are divided. One says that
special abstinence is the renunciation of everything that disturbs one [and
draws him away] from [service of] God. Another says that it means