Maimonides in His World. Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker

THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT 27

Jewish thinkers who preceded him to be phi losophers. No Jewish phi los-
opher is mentioned by name in the Guide. In Maimonides’ “Epistle to
Yemen” Saadya’s name appears only in order to make excuse for Saadya’s
lapse in his attempt to calculate the time of the advent of the Messiah.^11
Most notably, in his above mentioned letter to his Hebrew translator,
Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides offers his evaluation of several books
and phi losophers. Only two Jewish phi losophers are mentioned there
(probably because Ibn Tibbon had only asked about these two), and Mai-
monides dismisses both of them with scathing contempt. Isaac Israeli (d.
ca. 950) is put down as having been “only a physician“, whereas Joseph
Ibn Ñadiq (d. 1148), who wrote under the infl uence of the Neoplatoniz-
ing Pure Brethren (Ikhwan al-safa), is brushed aside with a biblical quo-
tation that implies that he was a fool.^12
Nevertheless, Maimonides cannot ignore the bulk of writings by previ-
ous Jewish thinkers, and in the same chapter 71 of the Guide he offers a
remarkable analysis of where this kind of Jewish thought originated. Ac-
cording to him, the encounter of Christianity with Greek philosophy
during the fi rst Christian centuries forced the Christians to formulate an
apologetic theology, for which they had to acquire philosophical tools.
When Christianity became the religion of the empire, this apologetic phi-
losophy was reinforced by the power of the state.

Inasmuch as the Christian community came to include those com-

munities [that is, the Greeks and the Syrians]... and inasmuch as

the opinions of the phi losophers were widely accepted in those com-

munities in which philosophy had fi rst arisen, and inasmuch as kings

arose who protected religion, the learned of those periods from among

the Greeks and Syrians saw that those preachings were greatly and

clearly opposed to the philosophic opinions. Thus there arose among

them the science of the kalam. They started to establish premises that

would be useful to them with regard to their belief and to refute

those opinions that ruined the foundations of their law.^13

For Maimonides, then, the Christian philosophical tradition was nothing
more than kalam—that is to say, theology. For him, this meant that
“[the Christians] did not conform in their premises to the appearance of
that which exists, but considered how being ought to be in order that it
should furnish a proof for the correctness of a par ticular opinion, or at

(^11) Epistles, 99– 100 [Arabic], 142– 44 [Hebrew].
(^12) See Marx, “Texts by and about Maimonides,” 378; Epistles, 552; and see Pines, “Trans-
lator’s Introduction,” cxxxii– iv; S. Stroumsa, “A Note on Maimonides’ Attitude to Joseph
IbnSadiq,” Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume, Part 2 (Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8
[1990]): 210– 15 [Hebrew].
(^13) Dalala, 122; Pines, 177.