Maimonides’s prolific writing career did not end with the publication of his Guide for the Perplexed. In 1191, he wrote his Treatise on Resurrection, inspired by a conflict within the Jewish community regarding the concept of the resurrection of the dead. Mainstream Jews believed that God would literally raise the bodies of the dead to live eternally on Earth; however, some groups subscribed to a theory that the afterlife is a purely spiritual one and does not necessitate any sort of corporeal resurrection. They used the writings of Maimonides, with their indictment of material form as an impediment to the knowledge of God and its assumptions about the metaphysical universe, as proofs for a worldview that did not need to accept the idea of bodily resurrection. In turn, Maimonides was accused of heresy by members of the dominant school of thought.
As a response to this, he composed the Treatise as a way to set the record straight, and he aligned himself with the more traditional interpretation of resurrection. He wrote that resurrection is a fundamental reality in Judaism, citing several examples of literal resurrections in the Scriptures. He laments that the allegorical methodology he uses to describe the nature of God has been corrupted to support such a falsehood, and he vehemently rejects the idea that resurrection can be entirely spiritual. Still, the Treatise is not without its own scandal; Maimonides does not believe that the resurrection of the dead is necessarily eternal, and he advocates the idea that, having been resurrected, a body might continue to live normally for a period of time before meeting another natural end.
The philosopher’s last major work was the Letter on Astrology, composed in 1195. Like the Guide, Maimonides’s pronunciations on astrology were put together in response to a scholastic query—this time from a Jewish academic community in the French city of Marseilles. Maimonides’s treatise on astrology follows the precedents that had been set in related discussions that made their way into the Mishneh Torah and the Guide. The philosopher rails against the fallacies and idiocies of astrology, which he considers to be not a real science, but a dangerously misleading cultic fascination. Maimonides warns his readers against putting trust in anything that cannot be understood through philosophical proofs, confirmed through the senses, or received from the prophets.
The writings of Maimonides demonstrate something of his character—his affinity for close scholarship and his fundamental beliefs in the Talmud and Jewish law. The regard with which the philosopher was held in his own community is indicated by his elevation to the role of nagid, and his far-flung reputation is evidenced by the solicitation of his advice and commentary from an array of people, from his former students to communities of scholars whom he had not even met. But the scholar-philosopher wore one other mantle: as a court physician, he had opportunity to develop theories not only on philosophy, science, and eschatology, but also on medicine.
World History
