Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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divine word, now c alled ‘Amr, Arabic for God’s word of command, embodying the
imperat ive forc e of arc het ypal and normat ive wisdom. Like Philo and t he prophet s
in their way, he finds God’s word immane nt and ac c essible, in nature and the Law.
Halevi’s Khazar responds thoughtfully to the Christian and Muslim
spokespersons: not having been reared among them, he does not long to make
sense of Christian mysteries or warmly resonate to the Arabic of the Qur’an.
Naturalists always try to rationalize what they observe. But without direct
experienc e or the heart’s c onsent that is won in early c hildhood, Christian and
Muslim t radit ions do not c ompel. T he root s of c ommit me nt , Halevi finds, lie not in
t h e mo me n t a ry ec stasies of an isolated anc horite or the abstrac t ruminations of
int ellec t ualist philosophers but in t he t ransgenerat ional life of a people.
Touc hed by the yearnings of the Hebrew liturgy (to whic h he, like Ibn Gabirol,
c ontributed), Halevi demands to know how one c an weep for Zion and not go there,
where God’s Presence is clearest and the life God commanded is most fully lived.
Ac ting on this yearning, Halevi left Spain and journeyed to his people’s anc ient
home, where he died, as legend has it, kissing the soil of Zion, run through by an
Arab horseman’s spear. But, even had he lived, his yearnings would not have
ended with arrival in the holy c ity. For his famous lines, ‘My heart is in the East, but
I am in t he ut most West ,’ voic e spirit ual as well as earthly longing, not to be sated
by mere presence in the Land.
In the Book of Guidanc e to the Duties of the Heart Bahya Ibn Pakuda (mid-
11th to mid-12th c entury) made philosophic understanding a spiritual obligation,
involving study of nature, probing of God’s Law, and int ernalizat ion of it s
c ommands. Following t he anc ient piet ist t radit ion, Bahya finds a kernel of self-
serving in t ypic al worries about free will, whic h neit her reason nor t ext s c an
resolve. Wisdom urges us t o ac c ept maximal responsibilit y for our own ac ts and to
accept all that befalls us as God’s work... Humanis m, we note, often does just the
opposite, blaming fate, or God (as in the Epic urean dilemma) over what we do not
c ontrol, even in ourselves, but indulging in self-c ongratulation, anxiety, or remorse
over what we deem our own domain. Bahya’s approac h, like that of the Stoic s, is
rhet oric al, a t ac t ic for c oping, not a met aphysic al solut ion. But in voic ing an out look
we c an never wholly share, he offers us a kind of reality c hec k: our own exc uses
and c ast igat ions are equally rhet oric al, as we not ic e when t hey assign c redit or
blame, shoulder or shirk responsibilit y, ot herwise t han Bahya does.
Maimonides, called the Rambam, an acronym of the Hebrew, Rabbi Moses ben
Maimon (1135?–1204), was born in Cordova but exiled wit h his family in 1148,
when the Almohad invaders imposed c onversion on non-Muslims. Living first in
Nort h Afric a, t hen briefly in Palest ine, he set t led in Cairo and t ook up medic ine t o
support his family aft er his brot her’s deat h in a shipwrec k. His medic al servic e t o
Saladin’s wazir was complemented by a busy private practice, and he authored ten
medic al t reat ises.
Maimonides wrot e t hree major juridic al works: (1) The Book of the
Commandments sc hemat ized t he t radit ional 613 mit zvot or divine c ommands of the
Pentateuc h, notably inc luding “I am the Lord thy God...” and “Thou shalt have no
other gods before me...” as the first of the positive and negative c ommandments,
arguing, with rabbinic precedent (Makkot, near the end) that these two precepts,
addressed directly by God to human understanding, are the axioms grounding all
the rest. (2) His Arabic c ommentary on the Mishnah, the anc ient legal c ode that