1
I . DAVID BEN MERWAN AL MUKAMMAS
17
I I. SAADIA BEN JOSEPH AL-FAYYUMI
23
IV. JOSEPH AL-BASIR AND JESHUA BEN JUDAH
48
V. SOLOMON IBN GABIROL
59
VI. BAHYA IBN PAKUDA
80
VI . PSEUDO-BAHYA
106
VI I. ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA
114
IX. JOSEPH IBN ZADDIK
125
X. JUDAH HALEVI
150
XI. MOSES AND ABRAHAM IBN EZRA
184
XI . ABRAHAM IBN DAUD
197
XI I. MOSES MAIMONIDES
236
XIV. HILLEL BEN SAMUEL
312
XV. LEVI BEN GERSON
328
XVI. AARON BEN ELIJAH OF NICOMEDIA
362
XVI . HASDAI BEN ABRAHAM CRESCAS
388
XVI I. JOSEPH ALBO
406
CONCLUSION
428
BIBLIOGRAPHY
433
NOTES
439
LIST OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINIC PASSAGES
449
INDEX
451
INTRODUCTION
The philosophical movement in mediæval Jewry was the result of the desire and the necessity, felt by the leaders of
Jewish thought, of reconciling two apparently independent sources of truth. In the middle ages, among Jews as well as
among Christians and Mohammedans, the two sources of knowledge or truth which were clearly present to the minds of
thinking people, each claiming recognition, were religious opinions as embodied in revealed documents on the one hand,
and philosophical and scientific judgments and arguments, the results of independent rational reflection, on the other.
Revelation and reason, religion and philosophy, faith and knowledge, authority and independent reflection are the
various expressions for the dualism in mediæval thought, which the philosophers and theologians of the time endeavored
to reduce to a monism or a unity.
Let us examine more intimately the character and content of the two elements in the intellectual horizon of mediæval
Jewry. On the side of revelation, religion, authority, we have the Bible, the Mishna, the Talmud. The Bible was the
written law, and represented literally the word of God as revealed to lawgiver and prophet; the Talmud (including the
Mishna) was the oral law, embodying the unwritten commentary on the words of the Law, equally authentic with the
latter, contemporaneous with it in revelation, though not committed to writing until many ages subsequently and until then
handed down by word of mouth; hence depending upon tradition and faith in tradition for its validity and acceptance.
Authority therefore for the Rabbanites was two-fold, the authority of the direct word of God which was written down as
soon as communicated, and about which there could therefore be no manner of doubt; and the authority of the indirect
word of God as transmitted orally for many generations before it was written down, requiring belief in tradition. By the
Karaites tradition was rejected, and there remained only belief in the words of the Bible.
On the side of reason was urged first the claim of the testimony of the senses, and second the validity of logical
inference as determined by demonstration and syllogistic proof. This does not mean that the Jewish thinkers of the
middle ages developed unaided from without a system of thought and a Weltanschauung, based solely upon their own
observation and ratiocination, and then found that the view of the world thus acquired stood in opposition to the religion
of the Bible and the Talmud, the two thus requiring adjustment and reconciliation. No! The so-called demands of the
reason were not of their own making, and on the other hand the relation between philosophy and religion was not
altogether one of opposition. To discuss the latter point first, the teachings of the Bible and the Talmud were not
altogether clear on a great many questions. Passages could be cited from the religious documents of Judaism in
reference to a given problem both pro and con. Thus in the matter of freedom of the will one could argue on the one
hand that man must be free to determine his conduct since if he were not there would have been no use in giving him
commandments and prohibitions. And one could quote besides in favor of freedom the direct statement in Deuteronomy
30, 19, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing
and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed." But on the other hand it was just as
possible to find Biblical statements indicating clearly that God preordains how a person shall behave in a given case.
Thus Pharaoh's heart was hardened that he should not let the children of Israel go out of Egypt, as we read in Exodus 7,
3: "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not
hearken unto you, and I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of
the land of Egypt by great judgments." Similarly in the case of Sihon king of Heshbon we read in Deuteronomy 2, 30:
"But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart
obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as at this day." And this is true not merely of heathen kings, Ahab king
of Israel was similarly enticed by a divine instigation according to I Kings 22, 20: "And the Lord said, Who shall entice
Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?"
The fact of the matter is the Bible is not a systematic book, and principles and problems are not clearly and strictly
formulated even in the domain of ethics which is its strong point. It was not therefore a question here of opposition
between the Bible and philosophy, or authority and reason. What was required was rather a rational analysis of the
problem on its own merits and then an endeavor to show that the conflicting passages in the Scriptures are capable of
interpretation so as to harmonize with each other and with the results of rational speculation. To be sure, it was felt that
the doctrine of freedom is fundamental to the spirit of Judaism, and the philosophic analyses led to the same result
though in differing form, sometimes dangerously approaching a thorough determinism, as in Hasdai Crescas.[1]
If such doubt was possible in an ethical problem where one would suppose the Bible would be outspoken, the
uncertainty was still greater in purely metaphysical questions which as such were really foreign to its purpose as a book
of religion and ethics. While it was clear that the Bible teaches the existence of God as the creator of the universe, and of
man as endowed with a soul, it is manifestly difficult to extract from it a rigid and detailed theory as to the nature of God,
the manner in which the world was created, the nature of the soul and its relation to man and to God. As long as the
Jews were self-centered and did not come in close contact with an alien civilization of a philosophic mould, the need for a
carefully thought out and consistent theory on all the questions suggested was not felt. And thus we have in the
Talmudic literature quite a good deal of speculation concerning God and man. But it can scarcely lay claim to being
rationalistic or philosophic, much less to being consistent. Nay, we have in the Bible itself at least two books which
attempt an anti-dogmatic treatment of ethical problems. In Job is raised the question whether a man's fortunes on earth
bear any relation to his conduct moral and spiritual. Ecclesiastes cannot make up his mind whether life is worth living,
and how to make the best of it once one finds himself alive, whether by seeking wisdom or by pursuing pleasure. But
here too Job is a long poem, and the argument does not progress very rapidly or very far. Ecclesiastes is rambling rather
than analytic, and on the whole mostly negative. The Talmudists were visibly puzzled in their attitude to both books,
wondered whether Job really existed or was only a fancy, and seriously thought of excluding Ecclesiastes from the
canon. But these attempts at questioning the meaning of life had no further results. They did not lead, as in the case of
the Greek Sophists, to a Socrates, a Plato or an Aristotle. Philo in Alexandria and Maimonides in Fostat were the
products not of the Bible and the Talmud alone, but of a combination of Hebraism and Hellenism, pure in the case of
Philo, mixed with the spirit of Islam in Maimonides.
And this leads us to consider the second point mentioned above, the nature and content of what was attributed in the
middle ages to the credit of reason. It was in reality once more a set of documents. The Bible and Talmud were the
documents of revelation, Aristotle was the document of reason. Each was supreme in its sphere, and all efforts must be
bent to make them agree, for as revelation cannot be doubted, so neither can the assured results of reason. But not all
which pretends to be the conclusion of reason is necessarily so in truth, as on the other hand the documents of faith are
subject to interpretation and may mean something other than appears on the surface.
That the Bible has an esoteric meaning besides the literal has its source in the Talmud itself. Reference is found there to
a mystic doctrine of creation known as "Maase Bereshit" and a doctrine of the divine chariot called "Maase Merkaba."[2]
The exact nature of these teachings is not known since the Talmud itself prohibits the imparting of this mystic lore to any
but the initiated, i. e., to those showing themselves worthy; and never to more than one or two at a time.[3] But it is clear
from the names of these doctrines that they centered about the creation story in Genesis and the account of the divine
chariot in Ezekiel, chapters one and ten. Besides the Halaka and Agada are full of interpretations of Biblical texts which
are very far from the literal and have little to do with the context. Moreover, the beliefs current among the Jews in
Alexandria in the first century B.C. found their way into mediæval Jewry, that the philosophic literature of the Greeks was
originally borrowed or stolen from the Hebrews, who lost it in times of storm and stress.[4] This being the case, it was
believed that the Bible itself cannot be without some allusions to philosophic doctrines. That the Bible does not clearly
teach philosophy is due to the fact that it was intended for the salvation of all men, the simple as well as the wise, women
and children as well as male adults. For these it is sufficient that they know certain religious truths within their grasp and
conduct themselves according to the laws of goodness and righteousness. A strictly philosophic book would have been
beyond their ken and they would have been left without a guide in life. But the more intellectual and the more ambitious
are not merely permitted, nay they are obligated to search the Scriptures for the deeper truths found therein, truths akin
to the philosophic doctrines found in Greek literature; and the latter will help them in understanding the Bible aright. It
thus became a duty to study philosophy and the sciences preparatory thereto, logic, mathematics and physics; and thus
equipped to approach the Scriptures and interpret them in a philosophical manner. The study of mediæval Jewish
rationalism has therefore two sides to it, the analysis of metaphysical, ethical and psychological problems, and the
application of these studies to an interpretation of Scripture.
Now let us take a closer glance at the rationalistic or philosophic literature to which the Jews in the middle ages fell heirs.
In 529 A.D. the Greek schools of philosophy in Athens were closed by order of Emperor Justinian. This did not, however,
lead to the extinction of Greek thought as an influence in the world. For though the West was gradually declining
intellectually on account of the fall of Rome and the barbarian invasions which followed in its train, there were signs of
progress in the East which, feeble at first, was destined in the course of several centuries to illumine the whole of Europe
with its enlightening rays.
Long before 529, the date of the closing of the Greek schools, Greek influence was introduced in the East in Asia and
Africa.[5] The whole movement goes back to the days of Alexander the Great and the victories he gained in the Orient.
From that time on Greeks settled in Asia and Africa and brought along with them Greek manners, the Greek language,
and the Greek arts and sciences. Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies in Egypt after the death of Alexander, and
Antioch, the capital of Syria under the empire of the Seleucidæ, were well-known centres of Greek learning.
When Syria changed masters in 64 B.C. and became a Roman province, its form of civilization did not change, and the
introduction of Christianity had the effect of spreading the influence of the Greeks and their language into Mesopotamia
beyond the Euphrates. The Christians in Syria had to study Greek in order to understand the Scriptures of the Old and
the New Testaments, the decrees and canons of the ecclesiastical councils, and the writings of the Church Fathers.
Besides religion and the Church, the liberal arts and sciences, for which the Greeks were so famous, attracted the
interests of the Syrian Christians, and schools were established in the ecclesiastical centres where philosophy,
mathematics and medicine were studied. These branches of knowledge were represented in Greek literature, and hence
the works treating of these subjects had to be translated into Syriac for the benefit of those who did not know Greek.
Aristotle was the authority in philosophy, Hippocrates and Galen in medicine.
The oldest of these schools was in Edessa in Mesopotamia, founded in the year 363 by St. Ephrem of Nisibis. It was
closed in 489 and the teachers migrated to Persia where two other schools became famous, one at Nisibis and the other
at Gandisapora. A third school of philosophy among the Jacobite or Monophysite Christians was that connected with the
convent of Kinnesrin on the left bank of the Euphrates, which became famous as a seat of Greek learning in the
beginning of the seventh century.
Christianity was succeeded in the Orient by Mohammedanism, and this change led to even greater cultivation of Greek
studies on the part of the Syrians. The Mohammedan Caliphs employed the Syrians as physicians. This was especially
true of the Abbasid dynasty, who came into power in 750. When they succeeded to the Caliphate they raised Nestorian
Syrians to offices of importance, and the latter under the patronage of their masters continued their studies of Greek
science and philosophy and translated those writings into Syriac and Arabic. Among the authors translated were,
Hippocrates and Galen in medicine, Euclid, Archimedes and Ptolemy in mathematics and astronomy, and Aristotle,
Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias in philosophy. In many cases the Greek writings were not turned directly into
Arabic but as the translators were Syrians, the versions were made first into Syriac, and then from the Syriac into Arabic.
The Syrian Christians were thus the mediators between the Greeks and the Arabs. The latter, however, in the course of
time far surpassed their Syrian teachers, developed important schools of philosophy, became the teachers of the Jews,
and with the help of the latter introduced Greek philosophy as well as their own development thereof into Christian
Europe in the beginning of the thirteenth century.
We see now that the impulse to philosophizing came from the Greeks,—and not merely the impulse but the material, the
matter as well as the method and the terminology. In the Aristotelian writings we find developed an entire system of
thought. There is not a branch of knowledge dealing with fundamental principles which is not there represented. First of
all Aristotle stands alone as the discoverer of the organon of thought, the tool which we all employ in our reasoning and
reflection; he is the first formulator of the science and art of logic. He treats besides of the principles of nature and
natural phenomena in the Physics and the treatise on the Heavens. He discusses the nature of the soul, the senses and
the intellect in his "Psychology." In the "History of Animals" and other minor works we have a treatment of biology. In the
Nikomachean and Eudemian Ethics he analyzes the meaning of virtue, gives a list and classification of the virtues and
discusses the summum bonum or the aim of human life. Finally in the Metaphysics we have an analysis of the
fundamental notions of being, of the nature of reality and of God.
The Jews did not get all this in its purity for various reasons. In the first place it was only gradually that the Jews became
acquainted with the wealth of Aristotelian material. We are sure that Abraham Ibn Daud, the forerunner of Maimonides,
had a thorough familiarity with the ideas of Aristotle; and those who came after him, for example Maimonides,
Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas, show clearly that they were deep students of the ideas represented in the writings of the
Stagirite. But there is not the same evidence in the earlier writings of Isaac Israeli, Saadia, Joseph Ibn Zaddik, Gabirol,
Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Judah Halevi. They had picked up Aristotelian ideas and principles, but they had also absorbed ideas
and concepts from other schools, Greek as well as Arabian, and unconsciously combined the two.
Another explanation for the rarity of the complete and unadulterated Aristotle among the Jewish thinkers of the middle
ages is that people in those days were very uncritical in the matter of historical facts and relations. Historical and literary
criticism was altogether unknown, and a number of works were ascribed to Aristotle which did not belong to him, and
which were foreign in spirit to his mode of thinking. They emanated from a different school of thought with different
presuppositions. I am referring to the treatise called the "Theology of Aristotle,"[6] and that known as the "Liber de
Causis."[7] Both were attributed to Aristotle in the middle ages by Jews and Arabs alike, but it has been shown recently[8]
that the former represents extracts from the works of Plotinus, the head of the Neo-Platonic school of philosophy, while
the latter is derived from a treatise of Proclus, a Neo-Platonist of later date.
Finally a third reason for the phenomenon in question is that the Jews were the pupils of the Arabs and followed their
lead in adapting Greek thought to their own intellectual and spiritual needs. It so happens therefore that even in the case
of Abraham Ibn Daud, Maimonides and Gersonides, who were without doubt well versed in Aristotelian thought and
entertained not merely admiration but reverence for the philosopher of Stagira, we notice that instead of reading the
works of Aristotle himself, they preferred, or were obliged as the case may be, to go to the writings of Alfarabi, Avicenna
and Averroes for their information on the views of the philosopher. In the case of Gersonides this is easily explained. It
seems he could read neither Latin nor Arabic[9] and there was no Hebrew translation of the text of Aristotle. Averroes had
taken in the fourteenth century the place of the Greek philosopher and instead of reading Aristotle all students read the
works of the Commentator, as Averroes was called. Of course the very absence of a Hebrew translation of Aristotle's text
proves that even among those who read Arabic the demand for the text of Aristotle was not great, and preference was
shown for the works of the interpreters, compendists and commentators, like Alfarabi and Avicenna. And this helps us to
understand why it is that Ibn Daud and Maimonides who not only read Arabic but wrote their philosophical works in
Arabic showed the same preference for the secondhand Aristotle. One reason may have been the lack of historical and
literary criticism spoken of above, and the other the difficulty of the Arabic translations of Aristotle. Aristotle is hard to
translate into any language by reason of his peculiar technical terminology; and the difficulty was considerably enhanced
by the fact that the Syriac in many cases stood between the original Greek and the Arabic, and in the second place by
the great dissimilarity between the Semitic language and its Indo-European original. This may have made the copies of
Aristotle's text rare, and gradually led to their disuse. The great authority which names like Alfarabi, Avicenna and
Averroes acquired still further served to stamp them as the approved expositors of the Aristotelian doctrine.
Among the Arabs the earliest division based upon a theoretical question was that of the parties known as the "Kadariya"
and the "Jabariya."[10] The problem which was the cause of the difference was that of free will and determinism.
Orthodox Islam favored the idea that man is completely dependent upon the divine will, and that not only his destiny but
also his conduct is determined, and his own will does not count. This was the popular feeling, though as far as the Koran
is concerned the question cannot be decided one way or the other, as it is not consistent in its stand, and arguments can
be drawn in plenty in favor of either opinion. The idea of determinism, however, seemed repugnant to many minds, who
could not reconcile this with their idea of reward and punishment and the justice of God. How is it possible that a
righteous God would force a man to act in a certain manner and then punish him for it? Hence the sect of the "Kadariya,"
who were in favor of freedom of the will. The Jabariya were the determinists.
This division goes back to a very early period before the introduction of the Aristotelian philosophy among the Arabs, and
hence owes its inception not to reason as opposed to religious dogma, but to a pious endeavor to understand clearly the
religious view upon so important a question.
From the Kadariya, and in opposition to the Aristotelian movement which had in the meantime gained ground, developed
the school of theologians known as the "Mutakallimun." They were the first among the Arabs who deliberately laid down
the reason as a source of knowledge in addition to the authority of the Koran and the "Sunna" or tradition. They were not
freethinkers, and their object was not to oppose orthodoxy as such. On the contrary, their purpose was to purify the faith
by freeing it from such elements as obscured in their minds the purity of the monotheistic tenet and the justice of God.
They started where the Kadariya left off and went further. As a school of opposition their efforts were directed to prove
the creation of the world, individual providence, the reality of miracles, as against the "philosophers," i. e., the
Aristotelians, who held to the eternity of motion, denied God's knowledge of particulars, and insisted on the unchanging
character of natural law.
For this purpose they placed at the basis of their speculations not the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, the former
uncreated and continuous, but adopted the atomistic theory of Democritus, denied the necessity of cause and effect and
the validity of natural law, and made God directly responsible for everything that happened every moment in life. God,
they said, creates continually, and he is not hampered by any such thing as natural law, which is merely our name for
that which we are accustomed to see. Whenever it rains we are accustomed to see the ground wet, and we conclude
that there is a necessary connection of cause and effect between the rain and the wetness of the ground. Nothing of the
kind, say the Mutakallimun, or the Muʿtazila, the oldest sect of the school. It rains because God willed that it should rain,
and the ground is wet because God wills it shall be wet. If God willed that the ground should be dry following a rain, it
would be dry; and the one is no more and no less natural than the other. Miracles cease to be miracles on this
conception of natural processes. Similarly the dogma of creation is easily vindicated on this theory as against the
Aristotelian doctrine of eternity of the world, which follows from his doctrine of matter and form, as we shall have
occasion to see later.
The Muʿtazila were, however, chiefly known not for their principles of physics but for their doctrines of the unity of God
and his justice. It was this which gave them their name of the "Men of Unity and Justice," i. e., the men who vindicate
against the unenlightened views of popular orthodoxy the unity of God and his justice.
The discussion of the unity centered about the proper interpretation of the anthropomorphic passages in the Koran and
the doctrine of the divine attributes. When the Koran speaks of God's eyes, ears, hands, feet; of his seeing, hearing,
sitting, standing, walking, being angry, smiling, and so on, must those phrases be understood literally? If so God is
similar to man, corporeal like him, and swayed by passions. This seemed to the Muʿtazila an unworthy conception of
God. To vindicate his spirituality the anthropomorphic passages in the Koran must be understood metaphorically.
The other more difficult question was in what sense can attributes be ascribed to God at all? It is not here a question of
anthropomorphism. If I say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and a living God, I attribute to God life, power, knowledge.