Guide for the Perplexed

Study science to fall in love with God is the message of the Song of Songs according to both Maimonides and Gersonides. Whereas Maimonides believed it was forbidden to make the hidden meaning accessible to the average person, by the time Gersonides was writing a century later, the philosophical reading of the Bible was well known. Thus, he not only explicates the text but also quotes Aristotle 49 times to make his points.

Some contemporary scholars have argued that Maimonides only meant to claim for the masses that God revealed to Moses the Torah as we have it today, that he himself could not have accepted the Divine authorship of Torah since it is incompatible with his philosophical principles. Yet, a correct understanding of Maimonides yields no such incompatibility, and, indeed, there is to no reason not to take him at his word.

Even those who categorically deny that God has form, is composed of matter, is visible, or is subject to the constraints of time and place, cannot seem to relinquish the notion that God speaks precisely as described in the Bible.

Maimonides, in his Guide of the Perplexed, portrays sacrifices as a ruse to repudiate idolatrous practices prevalent at the time. In Mishneh Torah, however, Maimonides states that the messiah will rebuild the Temple and restore sacrifices just as they once were. How are Maimonides’ two works reconcilable?

The Bible already expresses ambivalence about Hebrew slavery, the rabbis expand upon it and Maimonides takes the next step, applying the negative evaluation of slavery even to non-Israelites.

The law of the heifer whose neck is broken, eglah arufah, has puzzled both traditional and modern commentators. What is it meant to accomplish? How does it work?