Recent research has given renewed attention to the intersection between the life and works of Moses Maimonides. In 2005, Herbert Davidson published a book dedicated to Maimonides' oeuvre and biography;Footnote 1 in 2007 Joel Kraemer released a volume that places Maimonides and his work in the context of his times and the Mediterranean milieu;Footnote 2 and in 2009, we saw the publication of a collection of essays, edited by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E. Goodman, and James A. Grady, centered upon Maimonides' historical context and contributions to different fields.Footnote 3 It is noteworthy, therefore, when another distinguished academic declares an intention not only to address this topic but, in Sarah Stroumsa's case, to do so by using modes of analysis employed mostly by earlier generations of scholars. In the process Stroumsa both gives new life to older methodologies and offers fresh insights into her subject and his Mediterranean world.
The idea of the Mediterranean as a conceptual cultural lens for study began in the early twentieth century with Henri Pirenne, and was further developed shortly thereafter by Fernand Braudel and Shlomo Dov Goitein. The usefulness of employing such a concept as “the Mediterranean,” however, has recently been questioned. Stroumsa begins her work by noting that it is precisely the diversity and openness, and not necessarily unity and tolerance, of the Mediterranean littoral that enabled a continuous exchange and integration of ideas by Maimonides. In each of her subsequent chapters she examines respectively his approaches to theology, phenomenology of religion, science, and his concept of perfection. By also reconsidering previously disputed influences on Maimonides, the author places herself in opposition to a minimalist approach concerning the adaption of influences from outside a Jewish context. Each of her assertions, however, is impressively supported by an incisive and often granular level textual and linguistic analysis.
Stroumsa identifies her own position with that of Shlomo Pines by considering Maimonides as someone who was deeply engaged with his Islamic surroundings. Maimonides stood at a cultural crossroads, which enabled him to operate simultaneously at different linguistic and conceptual registers and allowed him to address his material from outside a strictly Jewish theological frame. Stroumsa goes so far as to contend that Maimonides may have recast the Almohad revolution of ideas in Jewish terms and tailored its innovations to the needs of varying Jewish audiences. Stroumsa's assertion in Chapter 3 that Maimonides was “an Almohad fundamentalist” is provocative, but theirs was not a literalist fundamentalism. Rather, the Almohad brand of Islam did not allow for an anthropomorphic understanding of God as a tenet of true monotheism, and they were tolerant of philosophy. Maimonides adopts the Almohad position that the multitudes should understand the notion of incorporeality, and ought to be indoctrinated, essentially through the form of catechism. Stroumsa makes a convincing, if not circumstantial, case for the idea that the overall concept behind the Mishneh Torah was inspired by the Almohads who sought to summarize legal opinions by omitting the chain of transmission, scholarly disagreement, and, furthermore, endeavored to offer a summary of rulings that focused upon usūl, or primary authoritative sources of law.
As a polemicist, Maimonides simplifies in order to construct a comprehensible portrait of his subject and to mark off true philosophy from its perversions. Seeing himself in the dual roles of true heir to Aristotelianism and Jewish communal leader, he found it imperative to wage a purist's battle against the tendency of kalām, or theology, to make truth ancilla theologiae. He sometimes gave a reductionist caricature of kalām's integration into Judaism, despite a more complex history and development that, Stroumsa speculates, Maimonides may well have known. At the same time, she notes, he still anticipated some of modern scholarship's own recognition of kalām's early Christian and Muslim origins and influences. Similarly, his portrayal of the talmudic personage Elisha ben Abuyah underwent a process of reworking, possibly influenced by Maimonides' knowledge of a particular Islamic heretical archetype. Stroumsa makes an intriguing argument that Maimonides ascribes characteristics such as the denial of prophets and belief in the eternity of the world to Elisha, characteristics not found in the original talmudic text, that were borrowed from those associated with the well-known, ninth-century Muslim zindiq, or heretic, Ibn al-Rāwāndī. Additionally, later in Chapter 5, Stroumsa impressively surveys Maimonides' use of the term hadhayān, or “ravings,” and concludes that he employs it specifically to discredit certain theories and intellectual endeavors he considers irrational, mythical, part of the “sciences of the occult,” and related to contemporary non-Aristotelian esoteric ideas.
In Chapter 4, entitled “La Longue Durée,” Stroumsa contemplates Maimonides' originality as a phenomenologist of religion. He relies on the varied and fragmented Islamic sources for his own extensive research into the nature and origins of the Sabians. Maimonides' use of the term Sabian is a collective designation and was broadly applied inter alia to ancient Egyptians and Abraham's pagan contemporaries. The fact that he used a systematic analysis of sources has been mostly underappreciated, and his comparison of the Torah with the literatures described as “Sabian” is an original and revolutionary approach for his time. Stroumsa underscores his originality, and notes that within a Jewish context he was probably the first to undertake a comparative study of two religious systems and their development, and the only thinker of any religion up to that point who postulated how paganism influenced the growth of monotheistic faiths.
The centrality of the Jewish people for Maimonides is addressed in the final chapter, Chapter 6. He strove to elevate their level of understanding and to eliminate or mitigate, as much as possible, ideas that did not accord with reason. This process is illustrated by his attempt to disconnect, through an analysis of Hebrew terminology, the rabbinic and medieval Jewish theological identification of the Garden of Eden with a corporeal paradise of ultimate reward. As the Hebrew Bible, unlike the Qu'ran, does not relate the Garden of Eden to an afterlife, Maimonides was not bound to a corporeal notion in the same way as his Muslim counterparts. After disengaging the concept of reward from material associations, he could then proceed to address and integrate the Arabic philosophical concept of a generalized hereafter of noncorporeal intellection. Maimonides' engagement with both the Jewish and Arabic worlds permitted him in this case to adroitly negotiate between the religious and philosophical.
Maimonides' Treatise on Resurrection also serves to guard against false notions, though with a specific addressee in mind, namely his prized disciple Joseph ibn Shim'on. Here Stroumsa distinguishes between the (sometimes synonymous) usage of maqāla and risāla, or treatise and epistle, and observes that the structure of the Treatise on Resurrection did not conform to the established norms for an epistle. Because of its unusual tone, some scholars either thought that the treatise was not composed by Maimonides or was the result of compromise into which he was forced. Based on thorough textual analysis, Stroumsa concludes that this composition, though more outspoken and orthodox than Maimonides' other works, was intended, qua treatise, as an esoteric response and corrective guide to Joseph's philosophically one-dimensional and emotional Silencing Epistle on the Resurrection of the Dead, itself a response to Gaon Samuel ben Eli's semiphilosophical Treatise on Resurrection.
This thoroughly researched and contextualized assessment of Maimonides' relationship to his Mediterranean world is the result of Stroumsa's skillful and rigorous application of tracing sources, or Quellenforschung. One of the great values of her analysis is its ability to give a detailed sense of how the interplay between Arabic and Hebrew was integral to Maimonides' formulation of ideas. Stroumsa also consistently engages other academics in each step of her process; thus, the book is an important resource for anyone who desires an understanding of ongoing and previous scholarly conversations. The ultimate result is a comprehensive, detailed, and exquisitely nuanced work.
