Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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The way that we c ome to know God and the world is through a c ombination of
revelation and reason. Prophecy, for example, is not merely a gift from God
proc essed through human imaginat ion. According to Maimonides, prophecy also
requires perfec t ion of wisdom and moralit y as well as a developed imaginat ion. And
that gift from God is passed through the mediation of the Active Intellect (a
“rational emanation” of the presenc e of the Almighty in the world), so reason must
always play a part.
Indeed, a reason must play a role in t he love of God, Maimonides holds. It is in
large part t hrough t he int ellec t t hat we at t ain religious and spirit ual goals. By t he
same token, he say, the sacred writings of Judaism are truthful and do not require
us to ac c ept anything that c an not be proven by reason. Where they appear
otherwise, we are to read them as allegory. For this reason, study of Torah is one
way of achieving greater knowledge of God, engaging the intellec t in the searc h.
Faith and reason are not enemies but, in Maimonides’ thought, essential to eac h
other if we are to understand God.
But, above all else, the purpose of Mosaic law is to lead the Jewish people
away from the practice of idolatry, from paganism. T he rit ual sac rific es presc ribed
in the Torah represent a stopgap, a way station between the paganism that the
people Israel had left behind, and a t ruly et hic al and rat ional monot heism.
As much as he prizes reason, Maimonides believes t hat a Jewish life must
c ombine t he int ellec t wit h moral ac t ion, a synt hesis of t his Arist ot elian life of t he
mind and the Jewish daily phenomenon of the ac t. T hat was t he life Maimonides
himself led; he did c harit y work among t he poor as physic ian, was a dedicated
leader of the Jewish c ommunity, and wrote on both Jewish law and philosophy. T his
prac t ic e is ec hoed lat er in t he medieval period by Christ ian writ ers like T homas
Aquinas.
Jewish t hinkers of t his t ime were divided on Maimonides. His det rac t ors, who
c ould be quite violent on their denunc iations, were infuriated by his apparent
rejec tion of the resurrec tion of the dead in the Messianic Age, his insistenc e on the
intellec t as a c omponent of prophec y, his relianc e on Aristotelian c onc epts and
vocabulary. To many he was a heretic , despite his erudition in Mishnah and
seeming c ommit ment t o t radit ional Judaism in prac t ic e.
In 1230, twenty-six years after his death, some authorities tried to place a ban
on the study of The Guide for the Perplexed and on sec t ions of Maimonides’ legal
writ ings. The battle raged wit h part ic ular feroc it y in Franc e for several more years
until both pro-and anti-Maimonideans were shocked into a common position by a
group of Dominic an inquisitors who burned c opies of Maimonides’ writ ings. This was
too much for either side to bear and for a time the battle subsided. At the end of
the thirteenth c entury, it began to heat up again when a group of anti-Maimonidean
rabbis issued an edic t prohibiting anyone under the age of twenty-fiv e f ro m
studying Greek philosophy. But the worst of the c onflic t c ame to an abrupt end
when most of Franc e’s Jews were expelled in 1306 CE, giving the c ommunity
something muc h more pressing to worry about.