THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT 33
ingly recognizes the part that the Christian theological tradition played
in the translation of scientifi c and philosophical texts, and he admits that
they exerted a crucial infl uence on the formation of Islamic thought, but
his appreciation of this infl uence is thoroughly negative.
His awareness of the force of encounter of different cultures and of the
infl uence exercised by one culture upon another is remarkable. There is
little to correct in his appraisal of the infl uence of Greek philosophy on
the Church Fathers, although, under Farabi’s infl uence, he overrates the
role played by the po litical power of the Christian empire in the crystal-
lization of Christian theology. And Maimonides’ description of the emer-
gence of Muslim kalam stresses its indebtedness to its Christian pre deces-
sors, a point noted also by modern scholars.^32
As for Maimonides’ view of the origins of Jewish kalam, it also largely
corresponds to the one adopted by modern scholars. Moritz Steinsch-
neider, Isaac Husik, Jacob Guttmann, and Salo W. Baron, to mention
only a few, all agree in regarding Jewish kalam as molded under the infl u-
ence of Islam. The details of this infl uence were studied by scholars such
as Harry Austryn Wolfson and Georges Vajda, and their seminal works
have contributed to our understanding of Jewish kalam and its relations
to Muslim kalam.^33 Admittedly, Jewish systematic philosophy developed,
for the main part, under Islam and refl ects the strong infl uence of Islamic
philosophy.
Other parts of Maimonides’ outline, however, have been disputed and
corrected. Maimonides develops Farabi’s brief sketch and includes in it
Jewish thought as another link in the same transmission chain. The en-
counter of Christianity with Greek philosophy generated the theology of
the Church Fathers. The encounter of Islam with Christianity engendered
Muslimkalam. Finally, the encounter of Judaism (both Rabbanite and
that of the Karaites) with Muslim kalam fathered Jewish kalam. Maimo-
nides’ outline, however, is skewed in that it ignores the multicultural
nature of early Islamic society. Contacts in such a society are never neatly
arranged in pairs, and infl uences do not travel on a single linear track.
There is no reason to assume, a priori, that, while Muslims were meeting
(^32) See, for instance, M. Cook, “The Origins of Kalam”, BSOAS 43 (1980): 32– 43; S. Pines,
“Some Traits of Christian Theological Writing in Relation to Muslim Kalam and to Jewish
Thought,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 5 (1976): 104– 25
(reprinted in “The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, 3:Studies in the History of Arabic
Philosophy, ed. S. Stroumsa [Jerusalem, 1996] 79– 99).
(^33) See, for example, H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the kalam (Cambridge, Mass.,
1976); idem, Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1979);
G. Vajda, “Le ‘kalam’ dans la pensée reliegieuse juive du Moyen Age,” Revue de l’histoire
des religions 183 (1973): 160– 63, as well as Vajda’s numerous articles regarding Muqam-
mas, Qirqisani, Saadya, or Yusuf al- Basir.