Medieval Europe · 1138–1204
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon)
Rabbi, physician and philosopher from Córdoba, later in Cairo
God can only be described negatively; biblical images of God are figures for the unlearned. Reason cannot prove whether the world is eternal or created, so on that question one may follow scripture.
Life and thought
Moses Maimonides was born in Córdoba in 1138. When the Almohads ended toleration of Jews and Christians in al-Andalus, his family wandered through Spain and North Africa, settling in Fez, then briefly in Palestine, and finally in Fustat (Old Cairo) in about 1166. After his brother drowned on a trading voyage, he supported the family as a physician, eventually to the court of Saladin’s vizier, and led Egypt’s Jewish community. He died in 1204.
His Mishneh Torah arranged the whole of Jewish law in clear Hebrew. His Guide for the Perplexed, written in Arabic for a pupil torn between scripture and Aristotle, argued that the Bible’s bodily images of God are figures: of God we can only say what God is not. Where philosophy truly demonstrates something, scripture must be read to agree; but no demonstration settles whether the world is eternal or created, so one may follow scripture there. Aquinas cited him as “Rabbi Moses”; Spinoza argued against him.