Maimonides, Moses

(1135–1204)

   Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides throughout Europe, was the most important Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, one of the most important thinkers in the entire history of Judaism, and one of the most influential religious scholars of any time period. He wrote most of his works in Arabic, except for the Mishneh Torah, his great codification of the Jewish Law,written in Hebrew. His GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED (Dalālat al-Ha’irin) was known to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian philosophers, and influenced the thought of St. Thomas AQUINAS.

   Maimonides was born in Córdoba in Islamic Spain in 1135, and received a thorough early training in rabbinical tradition as well as the sciences and philosophy. When the fanatical Almohads came to power in 1148,Maimonides and his family fled to Morocco and subsequently to Palestine before finally settling in Egypt in 1165. Maimonides continued his studies, with his older brother David supported the family through merchant activities. But when David’s ship went down in the Indian Ocean,Maimonides turned to medicine to earn money. His renown as a physician became widespread, and he was eventually named court physician to the great Egyptian vizier, the famous Saladin (Muslim hero of the Third Crusade). But his fame as a rabbinical scholar was even more widespread, as Jews from throughout the world addressed questions to him. He was ultimately named head, or Nagid, of all the Egyptian Jews. He died in 1204, and was buried in the city of Tiberius in Palestine.

   Maimonides composed a number of medical treatises and one philosophical work on logic, but his earliest important work, his Book of Illumination, is a commentary on the basic rabbinical text, the Mishneh. Begun when he was 23 and completed a decade later in 1168, the text includes Maimonides’ famous 13 principles of the Jewish faith. His second major work was the Mishneh Torah, in which Maimonides codified the whole of Jewish law, a task no one had undertaken before. Although conservative Jews worried that Maimonides’ code would discourage ordinary Jews from studying the Talmud any more, the Mishneh Torah became a standard guide, and later served as the basis for the 16th-century code called the Shulkhan Arukh, which Orthodox Jews still consider authoritative today. Nonetheless, Guide for the Perplexed is probably Maimonides’ most important work.

   For modern Jews, Maimonides is probably the most widely studied of scholars. In Hebrew he is known as the “Rambam,” from the acronym of “Rabbi Moses ben Maimon.” It was commonly said of him that from Moses the prophet until Moses ben Maimon, there had been no one like him.

   Bibliography

   ■ Buijs, Joseph A. Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

   ■ Diamond, James Arthur. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

   ■ Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

   ■ Fox, Marvin. Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

   ■ Herschel,Abraham Joshua.Maimonides: A Biography. Translated from the German text by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982.

   ■ Leaman, Oliver. Moses Maimonides. London: Routledge, 1990.

   ■ Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines.With an introductory essay by Leo Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

   ■ ———. The Guide for the Perplexed. Abridged with introduction and commentary by Julius Guttmann. Translated from the Arabic by Chaim Rabin. With a new introduction by Daniel H. Frank. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1995.

   ■ ———. Maimonides’ Introduction to the Talmud: A Translation of the Rambam’s Introduction to his Commentary on the Mishna. Translated and annotated by Zvi L. Lampel. New York: Judaic Press, 1975.

   ■ Russell, H. M., and J.Weinberg, trans. The Book of Knowledge: From the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides. New York: Ktav, 1983.