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Updated: June 10, 2025
That Maimonides's influence upon Jewish theology and thought was deep and lasting is a truism. The attitude of the prominent theologians and philosophers who succeeded him will appear in the sequel in connection with our treatment of the post-Maimonidean writers. Here a word must be said of the general effect of Maimonides's teaching upon Jews and Judaism throughout the dispersion.
They are Creation, Immortality, Reward and Punishment, Resurrection, Eternity of the Law, The superiority of Moses to the other prophets, The priest's learning the future through the Urim and Tumim, Belief in the Messiah. Having made this criticism of Maimonides's thirteen articles, Crescas proceeds to discuss every one of the eight true beliefs named at the beginning of the last paragraph.
And yet the irony of history has willed that the fame of being the greatest Jewish philosopher shall be Maimonides's own, while his nearest predecessor, to whose influence he owed most, should be all but completely forgotten.
Maimonides cannot admit any ignorance in God, and takes refuge in the transcendent character of God's knowledge. What is unpredictable for us is not necessarily so for God. As he is the cause of everything, he must know everything. Gersonides who, as we have seen, is unwilling to admit Maimonides's agnosticism and transcendentalism, solves the problem in the same way as Ibn Daud.
The only source of Maimonides's ideas is to be sought in Neo-Platonism, in the so-called Theology of Aristotle which, however, Maimonides never quotes. He need not have used it himself.
Having no idea of the Alexandrian School and of the works of Philo and his relation to some theosophic passages in the Haggadah, he made no distinction between Midrash and Bible, and read Plato and Aristotle in both alike, as we shall see more particularly later. Maimonides's detailed criticism of Aristotle we shall see later.
This signifies that its trend of thought is Neo-Platonic, which combines Aristotelian physics with Platonic and Plotinian metaphysics, ethics and psychology. An examination of the book itself confirms Maimonides's judgment.
The doctrine of attributes as leading to a true conception of God, of God as absolutely incorporeal and without any resemblance or relation whatsoever to anything else is the very keystone of Maimonides's philosophical structure. His purpose is to teach a spiritual conception of God. Anything short of this is worse than idolatry.
The gist of Maimonides's arguments here is that the difference between eternity and creation resolves itself into a more fundamental difference between an impersonal mechanical law as the explanation of the universe and an intelligent personality acting with will, purpose and design. Aristotle endeavors to explain all motions in the world above the moon as well as below in terms of mechanics.
Also that being which is most separated from other things is best called one. Crescas disagrees with Maimonides's opinion that no positive attributes can be applied to God, such as indicate relation to his creatures, and so on.
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