Maimonides in His World. Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker

26 CHAPTER TWO

al-dalal, and although Maimonides probably neither intended nor ex-
pected his Yemenite readers to recognize the allusion, it does betray his
own familiarity with this work.
Unlike individual theologians, who are not mentioned by name, Mus-
lim theology as a whole is discussed by Maimonides at length. Theology
(kalam)—Mu
tazila and Ash
ariyya, Jewish (both Rabbanite and Kara-
ite), and Muslim— was sharply criticized by Maimonides. His par ticular
interest in rebuffi ng the kalam, together with the above mentioned general
methodological assumption (namely, that Maimonides had read more
than he quotes) support the now widely accepted assumption that Mai-
monides was well versed in Muslim theological literature.

Kalam: Christian, Muslim, Jewish

In chapter 71 of the fi rst part of his Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides
expounds his view on the beginning of Jewish philosophy. According to
him, the components of his own philosophy are all to be found in the
Jewish heritage, both biblical and Talmudic. He opens chapter 71 with
some rather apologetic words: “Know that the many sciences devoted to
establishing the truth in these matters [scil. physics and metaphysics] that
have existed in our religious community, have perished.”^9 Maimonides
thus insists on the existence of scientifi c and philosophical knowledge in
ancient Judaism, but he is also aware of the absence of any systematic
philosophical writings from the ancient period to substantiate his claim.^10
He then argues that, because of the oral transmission of these sciences
and because of the conditions of exile, this knowledge has perished. His
own philosophy is therefore, from his own viewpoint, not a continuation
but rather a rediscovery, a re- creation of that lost ancient lore.
In some ways, one can say that Maimonides’ pre sentation, which ac-
knowledges the emergence under Islam of a new kind of Jewish thought,
corresponds to the standard view of early Jewish thought in modern
scholarship. According to this standard view, Jewish systematic philoso-
phy emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries under Islamic rule and was
shaped by the infl uence of Islamic thought. For Maimonides, however,
the nonphilosophical period of Jewish thought extends later than it does
for modern scholarship. For him, the period devoid of Jewish philosophy
stretches up to his own days. Maimonides does not seem to consider the

(^9) Dalala, 121:9– 10; Pines, 175. Maimonides repeats this claim in other contexts, for ex-
ample in Mishneh Torah, hilkhot qiddush ha-hodesh, 17:24 (regarding lost astronomical
works from the times of the prophets).
(^10) Philo, the only premedieval Jewish thinker to have offered a systematic philosophical
thought, strongly infl uenced Christian thought, but had no direct impact on Jewish thought
and remained, on the whole, unfamiliar to medieval Jewish thinkers.