Greek philosophy, mediated by Arab authors, rapidly spread, and Jews well versed in this scholarship felt the need to reply. The greatest of these, and arguably the greatest thinker in all of Jewish history, was Maimonides. Maimonides was born in Cordoba, Spain, in 1135 and died in Fostat (the old city of Cairo, Egypt) in 1204. Not only a great philosopher, Maimonides was also one of the outstanding rabbinic legal scholars in all of Jewish history. His masterwork in this field was a codification of all of Jewish law in 14 books, known as Mishneh Torah (“Repetition of the Torah”). His genius here was in going through all previous rabbinic literature and thematically organizing it.
As a philosopher, Maimonides is best known for his work The Guide of the Perplexed. His philosophic training came to him through Arabic authors who were trained in Aristotelian philosophy, which became the basis for Maimonides, as well. His intended readership were Jews who, although well versed in their religious tradition, were also exposed to rational thought and, consequently, had difficulty with major portions of the Bible, in particular, the various anthropomorphic allusions to God. This led Maimonides to ascribe a spiritualized meaning to many of the biblical descriptions of God. From here, it was not far to an attempt at defining what we can and cannot know about God. How can God be one, yet have so many attributes? The essence of God’s unity and existence has a major part in the thinking of Maimonides.
Source credit: Professor Isaiah M. Gafni, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Maimonides
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Originally Posted by PostmodernProphet
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