How did Nahmanides propose to resolve the Maimonidean Controversy?

Date

2001

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Magnes

YU Faculty Profile

Abstract

The permissibility of pursuing 'external wisdom' became a major motif in the intellectual history of the Jews during the Middle Ages, and in the 1230s it exploded into the greatest controversy that had ever shaken European Jewry, cutting across the three major cultural centers of northern Europe, southern France, and Iberia. Concerned by allegorization of Scripture and other manifestations of philosophical radicalism, R. Solomon b. Abraham of Montpellier dispatched his distinguished student R. Jonah Gerondi to northern France with copies of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and Sefer ha-Madda' so that he might alert the northern rabbis to the sort of works that had been used and misused by the radical allegorizers. (from Introduction)

Description

Book chapter

Keywords

Maimonidean Controversy, Judaism --History --Medieval and early modern period, 425-1789., Naḥmanides, approximately 1195-approximately 1270.

Citation

Berger, D. (2001). How did Nahmanides propose to resolve the Maimonidean Controversy? In E. Fleischer, G. J. Blidstein, C. Horowitz, & B. Septimus, (Eds.), Meah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish spiritual life in memory of Isadore Twersky (pp. 135-146). Magnes, 2001.