The article discusses the metamorphoses of a book: The Guide or the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides. The receptions of the book from the time of its publication (1191), and especially his translation ...into Hebrew (1224) were diverse and went through many changes during the last eight centuries. From its publication the book caused a storm among Jewish thinkers and rabbis, and was accused of being a profanation, was banned, and even burned. These facts are particularly intriguing taking into account the authoritative role of Maimonides in the Jewish world, who was considered as the second Moses, was named the “great eagle”, and his book Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive code of Halakhah (Jewish law) is a canonical book since then. Acceptance and rejection of this book can be observed in the Jewish world till today. The book was understood as the source for very different philosophical and theo-logical approaches. Therefore, it has a sense to talk about ‘many Guides for the Perplexed’. The article is concentrated particularly, on modern times: Haskalah and Zionism.
Maimonides Roth, Leon
Is There a Jewish Philosophy?,
03/1999
Book Chapter
Maimonides (‘son of Maimon’), Moses; known by the scholastics as Rabbi Moyses or Moyses Judaeus or Moyses Aegyptius, in Hebrew literature as Rambam, also Maimuni. Born Cordova, south (Arabic) Spain, ...1138. Left Cordova as a boy of 13 with his family after the seizure of the country by the religiously intolerant Almohades, and after long wanderings finally settled in Egypt where his father, Maimon, died. When his brother David, a pearl merchant and main support of the family, was drowned at sea, he turned to the profession of medicine, becoming in 1170 physician to the viceroy of Egypt. Died 1204.
