Maimonides (1138-1204), jurist, physician, and philosopher, was adept in logic, astronomy and geometry. The author of ten medical works, a trenchant commentary on the Mishnah, a catalogue raisonné of the 613 commandments of the Torah, and the Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive, still authoritative code of halakha. The Guide to the Perplexed was Maimonides' philosophical masterpiece. Where the Mishnah had sought to bring order to Jewish Law, the Guide seeks to help Jewish readers navigate the straits between religious tradition and the challenges of Graeco-Arabic philosophy. Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophers held that the world was eternal, not created. Human agency was questioned, constrained if not by natural causes then by the decrees of God or fate. Maimonides stands out among the thinkers of every age for his confidence that religious faith is not belied but strengthened by philosophical inquiry and science.

Maimonides (1138-1204), jurist, physician, and philosopher, was adept in logic, astronomy and geometry. The author of ten medical works, a trenchant commentary on the Mishnah, a catalogue raisonné of the 613 commandments of the Torah, and the Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive, still authoritative code of halakha. The Guide to the Perplexed was Maimonides' philosophical masterpiece. Where the Mishnah had sought to bring order to Jewish Law, the Guide seeks to help Jewish readers navigate the straits between religious tradition and the challenges of Graeco-Arabic philosophy. Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophers held that the world was eternal, not created. Human agency was questioned, constrained if not by natural causes then by the decrees of God or fate. Maimonides stands out among the thinkers of every age for his confidence that religious faith is not belied but strengthened by philosophical inquiry and science.

Maimonides (1138-1204), jurist, physician, and philosopher, was adept in logic, astronomy and geometry. The author of ten medical works, a trenchant commentary on the Mishnah, a catalogue raisonné of the 613 commandments of the Torah, and the Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive, still authoritative code of halakha. The Guide to the Perplexed was Maimonides' philosophical masterpiece. Where the Mishnah had sought to bring order to Jewish Law, the Guide seeks to help Jewish readers navigate the straits between religious tradition and the challenges of Graeco-Arabic philosophy. Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophers held that the world was eternal, not created. Human agency was questioned, constrained if not by natural causes then by the decrees of God or fate. Maimonides stands out among the thinkers of every age for his confidence that religious faith is not belied but strengthened by philosophical inquiry and science.

This chapter focuses on the following topics: Jews in Andalusia, the Almohad Conquest, persecution and forced conversion. It also focuses on the translation into Arabic of key works of Greek science, medicine, and philosophy.

This chapter focuses on the following topics: Jews in Andalusia, the Almohad Conquest, persecution and forced conversion. It also focuses on the translation into Arabic of key works of Greek science, medicine, and philosophy.

This chapter explores the following timeline of events: the Almohads take Cordova (1148); al-Ghazālī and Ibn Tufayl; living as Crypto-Jews; Fez; a storm at sea Maimonides' vow; arrival in the Land of Israel (1165); Abraham, as Maimonides' model of the philosophical theologian; settling in Fustat (Old Cairo). This chapter also looks into Maimonides' explorations of comparative anthropology, using the Nabatean Agriculture to understand pagan piety.

This chapter focuses on the dangers of philosophical and theological impatience: "I say, as Themistius did, that reality does not conform to our beliefs; true beliefs must conform to reality." It also touches base on attaining focus in worship and study.

This chapter looks into Maimonides's marriage; his growing stature as source of rabbinical counsel and inspiration; his role in the ransom of captives, in restoring the "Moses" synagogue, in combating clerical corruption, and reforming religious practice. It also looks into the devastating loss of his brother David. His refusal to accept pay for rabbinical work leads him to turning to medical practice to support the family. After the overthrow of the Fāimid dynasty by Saladin (1171), al-Qāī al-Fāil, Saladin's eminence grise, becomes his wazir and takes on Maimonides as his physician. Maimonides completes the Mishneh Torah in 1180, after some 10 years' work. Saladin defeats the Crusaders at Hattin (1187), and conquers Jerusalem. In 1191 Maimonides completes the Guide to the Perplexed, after some 5 years' work.

Maimonides' 13 Articles of Belief. Beliefs are surrogates of knowledge, and possible gateways to it. Thus, belief in bodily resurrection stands in for knowledge of spiritual immortality. Beliefs (and the practices that instill true beliefs) underwrite the Mishnaic thesis that all Israel (and the Tosefta adds the righteous of all nations) have a share in the World to Come – even though not everyone can win intellectual access to the Eternal.

Maimonides groups the problems addressed in the Guide under two headings fenced off rabbinically: Ma'aseh Bereshit, the account of the creation in Genesis, and Ma'aseh Merkavah, Ezekiel's account of his vision of the "Chariot" seeming to bear a supernal throne. Maimonides identifies the first with Physics (cosmology); the second, with metaphysics (theology in Aristotelian parlance). The rabbinic restrictions reflect not obscurantism but caution against hasty plunging into these vital but dangerous domains without adequate preparation in logic, the sciences, and biblical poetics: "you can bring up pearls from the seabed if you know how to swim – but, if not, you will drown: Do not try swimming if you have not learned how." (1.37b)

This chapter explores science and logic as safeguards against religious naivete. Why was creation seen as problematic by readers of philosophy; why did the world's eternity seem more logical? Ezekiel's vision as a paradigm case of the discontinuity between God's infinity and the world's determinacy, between God's absolute perfection and the limitations of His creatures morally and intellectually. How can astronomy (and emanation) lead one from human finitude back toward God's infinite perfection?

This chapter explores science and logic as safeguards against religious naivete. Why was creation seen as problematic by readers of philosophy; why did the world's eternity seem more logical? Ezekiel's vision as a paradigm case of the discontinuity between God's infinity and the world's determinacy, between God's absolute perfection and the limitations of His creatures morally and intellectually. How can astronomy (and emanation) lead one from human finitude back toward God's infinite perfection?

Maimonides hopes his Guide will help inquirers see the gold ball within the silver tracery of biblical poetry. But there are prerequisites – in logic, mathematics, astronomy, physiology, and poetics. Hence his cautions against haste. The esoteric style, as David Margoliouth explained, rests on intertextuality. So do all three literatures that the Guide brings together: the Hebrew Scriptures, the discourses of the rabbinic Sages, and the corpus of Aristotle his Neoplatonic and Peripatetic heirs. The Guide itself brings together these three literatures – and part of it relies on all the rest. So one needs to read recursively here, and not just once. Readers, moreover, must use the rule of charity in a strong form, to bring to bear everything they know, much as scientists seek consilience in understanding nature and avoid assuming that anything here just fails to make sense.

Maimonides hopes his Guide will help inquirers see the gold ball within the silver tracery of biblical poetry. But there are prerequisites – in logic, mathematics, astronomy, physiology, and poetics. Hence his cautions against haste. The esoteric style, as David Margoliouth explained, rests on intertextuality. So do all three literatures that the Guide brings together: the Hebrew Scriptures, the discourses of the rabbinic Sages, and the corpus of Aristotle his Neoplatonic and Peripatetic heirs. The Guide itself brings together these three literatures – and part of it relies on all the rest. So one needs to read recursively here, and not just once. Readers, moreover, must use the rule of charity in a strong form, to bring to bear everything they know, much as scientists seek consilience in understanding nature and avoid assuming that anything here just fails to make sense.

Leo Strauss argued that Maimonides did not engage in philosophy in the Guide but artfully concealed his true intentions behind a smokescreen of boring technicalities. This chapter aims to put that canard to rest.

Strauss' reading deeply impacted Shlomo Pines' understanding of the Guide, not least in his projection onto the text of Kantian, Hegelian, and Logical Positivist notions. These readings are addressed here and in the Goodman-Lieberman commentary. Strauss saw contradictions sprinkled through the Guide, clues to a concealed intent that belies Maimonides' defense of creation, human agency, and humanizing aims of the mitzvot. But, as Herbert Davidson asked, Would Maimonides devote years to study of the Torah and its mitzvot unless he was committed to what he professed and argued? Strauss' treatment reflects the times in which it was written and republished, in the 1930s and 1950s. But the ingenuity Maimonides used in defending creation and free will, and in finding rational purposes in every biblical law – enhancing human lives, improving one's character, elevating the ethos, and opening intellectual pathways to God – may help readers gain clearer appreciation of his sincerity.

We no longer inhabit a geocentric universe. Even the impetus theory that Maimonides thought gave rigor to Aristotelian prime mover arguments no longer moves anyone who has (as Maimonides urges) studied physics before venturing into philosophical theology. The evidence of the red shift renders the idea that the world began far less unconfirmable than Maimonides supposed. Darwin is become the new poster-child of the denial of creation. But emanation, the flow of ideas, may seem more viable today than the prime mover idea. And Maimonides' embrace of Aristotle's thought that explanation has four dimensions – not just mechanical or material but also purposive and intellectual – retains far more than poetic power, if we are to maintain a full-blooded commitment to science and its working premise, that nature makes sense, and that living nature cannot be fairly and fully described without talk of purposes.

We no longer inhabit a geocentric universe. Even the impetus theory that Maimonides thought gave rigor to Aristotelian prime mover arguments no longer moves anyone who has (as Maimonides urges) studied physics before venturing into philosophical theology. The evidence of the red shift renders the idea that the world began far less unconfirmable than Maimonides supposed. Darwin is become the new poster-child of the denial of creation. But emanation, the flow of ideas, may seem more viable today than the prime mover idea. And Maimonides' embrace of Aristotle's thought that explanation has four dimensions – not just mechanical or material but also purposive and intellectual – retains far more than poetic power, if we are to maintain a full-blooded commitment to science and its working premise, that nature makes sense, and that living nature cannot be fairly and fully described without talk of purposes.

We no longer inhabit a geocentric universe. Even the impetus theory that Maimonides thought gave rigor to Aristotelian prime mover arguments no longer moves anyone who has (as Maimonides urges) studied physics before venturing into philosophical theology. The evidence of the red shift renders the idea that the world began far less unconfirmable than Maimonides supposed. Darwin is become the new poster-child of the denial of creation. But emanation, the flow of ideas, may seem more viable today than the prime mover idea. And Maimonides' embrace of Aristotle's thought that explanation has four dimensions – not just mechanical or material but also purposive and intellectual – retains far more than poetic power, if we are to maintain a full-blooded commitment to science and its working premise, that nature makes sense, and that living nature cannot be fairly and fully described without talk of purposes.