Although Maimonides’s primary focus was the study and illumination of Jewish law, we have seen that this is in no way his only realm of influence. His ideas and methodology live on even today in Jewish rabbinical schools (yeshivas), but also serve as a basis for theological studies in other religions. His works have been mined for secret codes with which to unlock the truths of the Torah and have been pored over for centuries by those who seek esoteric knowledge. Furthermore, his greatness as a physician continues to be commemorated by Jewish hospitals and doctors. But perhaps the rest of us, even if we are not studying to be rabbis, philosophers, or physicians, can take something else away from the life of Maimonides, as none of his achievements would have been possible without a firm dedication to close scholarship and an intense curiosity and desire to know and follow the truth.
Early Commentators and Followers
The reason for the somewhat lopsided modern conception of Maimonides as a philosopher above all else is no doubt the result of the subjects of commentaries about his works produced in the centuries after his death. For medieval theologians of all of the faiths of the Book, the Guide for the Perplexed offered a wealth of theories about the relationship between the Judeo-Christian understandings of God and the ideology of Aristotle, which dominated the philosophical curricula of medieval universities. Maimonides’s rationalist religious ideas appealed to Christian philosophers, notably the quintessential medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and the Scottish scholar and monk Duns Scotus (1265-1308).
Like Maimonides, theologians like Aquinas and Duns Scotus saw philosophy as a means to the understanding of theology and subscribed to the position articulated by Maimonides that reason and philosophical knowledge are stepping-stones to the correct interpretation of revealed knowledge. Aquinas also followed Maimonides in rejecting the Aristotelian idea of the eternity of the universe, concurring with the alternate proofs offered in the Guide, which suggest that the eternity of the universe cannot be proven one way or the other.
But Aquinas took Maimonides to task for the Guide’s insistence on the negative descriptions of God. For the Christian theologian, the essence of God was perfection; he theorized that, when we use language to identify an aspect of perfection in creation, we are really identifying an aspect of God that existed before that creation. For example, when we observe that a certain person is “good,” what we are really singling out for comment is the essential goodness that emanates from and is perfectly embodied by God; to deny worshippers this method of understanding was, to Aquinas, to effectively remove the average person’s ability to understand anything about God. Still, he advocated resistance to any attempt to fully anthropomorphize the Creator and was careful to maintain distinctions between the perfect attributes of God and the imperfect ones reflected in man—thus, although we might conceptualize the “goodness” of God in human terms, that goodness is not one and the same with the goodness observable in creation.
Duns Scotus was also impressed by Maimonides’s rational-religious philosophy. In his commentaries on the writings of the Jewish sage, he agrees with the stated position on the relationship between revelation and reason and, unlike Aquinas, follows Maimonides in the conception of the negative attributions of God. Another notable proponent of Maimonides’s philosophy was the German theologian Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), whose writings likewise rely on and incorporate many of the philosopher’s proofs on the nature of eternity, creation, and existence.
Earlier we saw that Maimonides’s interaction with Aristotelian ideas caused immediate consternation among certain groups of rabbinical scholars, leading to mass burnings of his books and general condemnation of his worthiness of authority. But even as his Mishneh Torah gained prominence in the yeshiva communities, the philosopher’s detractors did not fade away. Perhaps his most forceful antagonist was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Talmudic scholar who lived in Amsterdam.
Spinoza was united with Maimonides against the anthropomorphization of God, but the two agreed on little else. In his Tractatus theologico-politicus (Theologico-Political Treatise; written in 1670), Spinoza rejects his predecessor’s assertions about scripture and the prophets. Arguing that the Torah is the work of human minds and hands, Spinoza refuses to accept that the prophets of scripture should be likened to intellectual philosophers.
He also attacks the earlier philosopher’s ideas about Jewish law. Maimo-nides had asserted that the law of Moses, when understood correctly, was relevant to all people and ages; Spinoza, on the other hand, takes issue with certain commandments and argues that they have not been applicable to the Jewish community since the fall of the Temple. Spinoza adduces contemporary scientific advancements, arguing that the new understanding of natural law forces the abandonment of the theory that the Bible is anything more than a guide for righteous living or contains hidden scientific, philosophic, and esoteric meanings.
In the twelfth century, Maimonides attempted to recast Judaism as a philosophical and rational religion without changing fundamental beliefs about the Torah and the prophets. Five hundred years later, Spinoza espoused an almost reformist view of his religion by highlighting the shortfalls not of philosophy, but of the practice of Judaism itself—his disdain for Maimonides and those like him is clearly discernible in the opening to his Treatise, in which he identifies the task of the religio-philosophers as seeming to be the “[extortion] from Scripture [of] confirmations of Aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which I regard as the acme of absurdity.”12 For Spinoza, there is no sensible overlap between rational philosophy and religion.
In the same century, however, Maimonides’s religious interpretations were being considered in a somewhat surprising place: in Cambridge, England, where the astronomer, mathematician, and physicist Isaac Newton (1643-1727) had subscribed to some of Maimonides’s ideas and rationales. Although he is best known for his contributions to the modern study of physics, Newton was a passionate student of the Torah and the Talmud and spent much of his life convinced that revealed truths were hidden in and coded into scripture, waiting to be discovered once man had attained sufficient knowledge. What remains of his library show that Newton was well read in Jewish matters and harbored a particular interest in the writings of Maimonides.
Newton has been described as a “Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides.”13 After years of the study of Hebrew and rabbinical writings, he had arrived at the philosophical conclusion that the Christian Trinity was impossible; as proof, he cites Maimonides’s supposition that things that cannot be understood intellectually cannot function as objects of faith. Newton also followed Maimonides in the rejection of the possibility of miracles, as these cannot occur without circumventing natural laws, which he (and Maimonides) considered immutable. In the Christian environment of seventeenth-century Cambridge, such ideas were met with suspicion; in some circles Newton was considered afflicted with madness, and still other groups deemed him an outright heretic.
The Guide and Maimonides’s rational religious ideals clearly resonate through the centuries as enduring points of discussion and debate; indeed, the name of the Jewish sage himself is not nearly as well-known as those of his commentators. Maimonides’s legacy is shaped by the writings of those who are indebted to his ideas—Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Spinoza, and Newton—and as a result his relevance is not restricted to the fields of intensive theological scholarship and extends to a myriad of disciplines.
Maimonides Today
Although his reputation for rational religious philosophy is perhaps most enduring, we cannot overlook Maimonides’s contributions to other fields of study and inquiry. If the Guide inspired widespread philosophical debate across time and religions, the Mishneh Torah was considerably inspirational in its own right. The codified presentation of Jewish law continues to be a standard text for rabbinical study; yeshivas across the world bear the name of Maimonides, and these dedications commemorate the rabbi’s impact on Jewish scholasticism and the reverence with which his ideas and methodologies are regarded.
Maimonides has also been associated with kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism that has recently enjoyed something of a resurgence in the unlikely location of Hollywood. Scholars are at odds over whether or not Maimonides was, in fact, a proponent of the tradition. Certainly there is evidence that the Mishneh Torah was influenced by kabbalistic texts, but Maimonides’s status as a rationalist philosopher seems in opposition to an entirely mystical form of philosophy and worldview; in fact, we have already seen that Maimonides was wary of metaphysical knowledge falling into the hands of people who were not properly prepared.
Nevertheless, the Guide to the Perplexed has been adopted by some kabbal-ists as a text that contains esoteric truths. They point to Maimonides’s theory that the Torah is a source of hidden, secret knowledge. Because of the sage’s encouragement of the allegorical interpretation of scripture, his treatises are used to advocate the understanding of Jewish law as a guide for those seeking a prophetic experience. Of course, Maimonides himself was a firm believer in such things as angelic visitations and prophetic dreams and visions, and his assertions to this effect have been used to help the case of those hoping to connect Maimonides to kabbalah. It is unclear what Maimonides himself might have thought of this association; as we have seen with respect to his comments on the possibility of resurrection, even in his own lifetime there were those who sought to use the esteem and authority of his scholarship in order to advance ideas that he did not himself agree with. That Maimonides was aware of and incorporated aspects of kabbalah is not in question, but the extent of his intent with respect to it is debatable.
Outside of the realms of philosophy and religion, Maimonides continues to inspire medical excellence; an oath attributed to him is often substituted for the Hippocratic Oath by Jewish doctors. In addition to the yeshivas, Mai-monides has lent his name to hospitals and hospices, which are guided by the twelfth-century physician’s central premise that physical health goes hand-inhand with spiritual well-being and that a physician’s success relies on his or her ability to treat the mind and the body. The mission statement of Maimonides Medical Center in New York acknowledges Maimonides’s insistence on humane care and cultural tolerance, and it pledges that one of the hospital’s goals is to follow his example of medical philosophy and passion.
Even in hospitals that do not openly pay tribute to Maimonides, many modern medical practices still incorporate his general medical theories, including the connection between the mind and body and the emphasis on underlying causes rather than the treatment of symptoms on their own—despite the centuries of intervening medical advances, many of the treatments noted by Galen and Hippocrates and perpetuated by Maimonides are still practiced today.
Maimonides was a master of many things. But perhaps he is, above all else, an extremely conscientious scholar who left for us a record of a variety of his own courses of study. His codification of Jewish law in the Mishneh Torah, his enumeration of Aristotelian proofs in the Guide for the Perplexed, and his catalogs of drugs and diseases all evidence his penchant for exhaustive documentation, and we are left with what is largely the result of years of intense personal study and reflection, diligently recorded and often incorporated into larger and more complex works.
In addition to his influential pronouncements on subjects ranging from creation and the eternity of the universe to hemorrhoids, Maimonides left for us a record of the intellectual trends of early medieval philosophies of God, astronomy, science, and medicine. Even if sometimes his ideas and observations were not necessarily new, they nevertheless offer a glimpse into the dominant concerns of his day.
His tireless documentation and inquiry form the basis of Maimonides’s most significant accomplishments. His reputation for excellence in Talmudic study is so great that he has accrued the appellation “the Second Moses,” and his rational-religious ideology is still a source of debate for theologians around the globe. People as diverse as twelfth-century monks, seventeenth-century scientists, and modern-day celebrities all pay tribute to the ideas expounded by the rabbinical scholar, philosopher, community leader, physician, and astronomer Maimonides—a man who is at once medieval icon and “Renaissance man.”
World History
