rabbis in the west (1000– 1500 ce) 339
his like. Now, my son, I do not blame this class because they devote all
their time to the Talmudic argumentation ... My son! When thou meetest
such men, address them thus: My masters! What sin did your fathers
detect in the study of logic and philosophy? Is it a terrible crime to use
words with accuracy? And then, what say ye of the work of Aristotle and
Maimonides? Have you examined the inside of their books? If ye know
more than their covers, ye know of a surety that the books are an expos-
ition and justification of our precious precepts. If you are advanced in
years, and have not yet read the words of the philosophers ... then open
your ears before the sun be darkened!^36
Assertion of the value of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and acceptance of
Aristotelian arguments for the eternity of the world, aligned Caspi with
his Provençal contemporary, Levi b. Gershon, known also as Gerson-
ides or Ralbag, the last Jewish theologian to make extensive use of
Aristotelian philosophy. Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord covered in six
books the immortality of the soul, prophecy, divine knowledge, divine
providence, astronomy and mathematics, and the creation of the world.
These were the major philosophical issues of the time, and, despite his
great Jewish learning as Bible commentator and talmudist, Gersonides
(in contrast to Maimonides, whose work he often subjected to criticism)
placed Aristotle’s arguments on these topics to the fore rather than the
revelations of the Jewish tradition, turning for his understanding of
Aristotle to the works of Maimonides’ contemporary in twelfth- century
Spain, the Islamic philosopher Averroes (ibn Rushd), on whose works
he wrote commentaries.^37
By the mid- fourteenth century, after the death of Gersonides, Aris-
totelian rationality was to lose its appeal for many Jewish thinkers in
Spain, as other approaches to Torah, and especially mysticism, grew in
popularity and Islamic influence waned with the retreat of Muslim con-
trol from southern Spain. Hasdai b. Abraham Crescas, who came from
Barcelona and was appointed by the Christian Kingdom of Aragon
from 1387 as crown rabbi to represent the Jewish community to the
government, wrote at the end of his life in 1410 a fierce critique of the
Aristotelian tradition within Judaism. He attacked Gersonides as hereti-
cal and advocated replacing the views of Maimonides (whom he called
‘the Master’) with what he presented as a more Jewish form of Judaism.
In Crescas’ writings, what was left of the philosophical approach was
to be found less in specific doctrines than in rationalist methods. Cres-
cas, as much as those scholastics he criticized, wrote about proofs,