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For Aristotle there is no creator, and his proof is adequate. But for Ibn Daud it is decidedly inadequate. We are so far minus a proof that God is a creator ex nihilo. Ibn Daud simply asserts that God created matter, but this argument does not prove it. As to the incorporeality of God Aristotle can prove it adequately from the eternity of motion.
The rationalist has a fixed unchangeable Idea or reason or method, whose reality and value consists in its unity, permanence and immutability. In favor of this hypostatised reason, the rationalist Ibn Daud is ready to sacrifice so fundamental an institution as sacrifice in the face of the entire book of Leviticus, pretending that a single verse of Jeremiah entitles him to do so.
We have in these pages followed their ideas Saadia, Gabirol, Ibn Zaddik, Abraham Ibn Daud. The latter in particular anticipated Maimonides in almost all his ideas. None had the effect of upsetting the theological equilibrium of Jewry. Everyone had his admirers, no doubt, as well as his opponents.
Though the tendency to read philosophy into the Bible is as old as Philo, from whom it was borrowed by Clement of Alexandria and Origen and by them handed down to the other Patristic writers, and though in the Jewish middle ages too, from Saadia down, the verses of the Bible were employed to confirm views adopted from other considerations; though finally Abraham Ibn Daud in the matter of exegesis, too, anticipated Maimonides in finding the Aristotelian metaphysic in the sacred scriptures, still Maimonides as in everything else pertaining to Jewish belief and practice, so in the interpretation of the Bible also obtained the position of a leader, of the founder of a school and the most brilliant and most authoritative exponent thereof, putting in the shade everyone who preceded him and every endeavor in the same direction to which Maimonides himself owed his inspiration.
Among those of the congregation who lay face to the earth, Iskender presently recognised Elias; and close to him, both standing, were Selîm and Daûd, sons of Mûsa. No one seemed to have remarked his entrance. The service ended, all pressed forward to kiss the hand of the celebrant, and, having done so, one by one, streamed forth into the sunlight.
He then made haste to the hotel of Mûsa el Barûdi. The two sons of Mûsa, Daûd and Selîm, clad in robes of striped silk, and high red fezzes, sat out on stools, one on either side of the doorway, to feel the morning sun and chat with wayfarers. Behind them, against the doorpost, leaned a tall negro in white robe and turban, who held a broom in his hand, but seemed to have done with sweeping.
When Daud received intelligence of the fate of Annandpal, thinking himself too weak to keep the field, he shut himself up in his fortified place and humbly solicited forgiveness for his fault, promising to pay a large tribute and in the future to obey implicitly the Sultan's command.
Abraham Ibn Daud with better insight realizes that the contingent, which has no cause, and the free act, which is undetermined, are as such unpredictable. He therefore sacrifices God's knowledge of the contingent and the free so as to save man's freedom. It is no defect, he argues, not to be able to predict what is in the nature of the case unpredictable.
Ibn Daud is not consistent in his idea of the highest aim of man. We have just heard him say that the purpose of philosophy is conduct. This is true to the spirit of Judaism which, despite all the efforts of the Jewish philosophers to the contrary, is not a speculative theology but a practical religion, in which works stand above faith.
This conception of prophecy, which in its essentials, we shall see, was adopted by Abraham ibn Daud, Maimonides and Gersonides, naturally would not appeal to Judah Halevi. Prophecy is the prerogative of Israel and of Palestine. The philosophers have nothing to do with it. And yet, if their explanation is correct, their ranks should abound in them.
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