CHAPTER XIII
MOSES MAIMONIDES
With Maimonides we reach the high water mark of mediaeval Jewish philosophy. He was by far the most comprehensive mind of mediaeval Jewry, and his philosophy was the coping stone of a complete system of Judaism. In his training and education he embraced all Jewish literature, Biblical and Rabbinic, as well as all the science and philosophy of his day. And his literary activity was fruitful in every important branch of study. He was well known as a practicing physician, having been in the employ of the Caliph's visier at Cairo (Fostat), and he wrote on medical theory and practice. He was versed in mathematics and astronomy, and his knowledge of these subjects served him in good stead not merely as an introduction to theology and metaphysics, but was of direct service in his studies and writings on the Jewish calendar. It goes without saying that he knew logic, for this was the basis of all learning in mediæval times; but in this branch, too, Maimonides has left us a youthful treatise,247 which bears witness to his early interest in science and his efforts to recommend its study as helpful to a better understanding of Jewish literature.
But all these activities and productions were more or less side issues, or preparations for a magnum opus, or rather magna opera. From his youth we can trace the evident purpose, not finally completed until toward the end of his brilliant and useful career, — the purpose to harmonize Judaism with philosophy, to reconcile the Bible and Talmud with Aristotle. He was ambitious to do this for the good of Judaism, and in the interest of a rational and enlightened faith. Thus in his commentary on the Mishna,248 the earliest of his larger works, he had already conceived the idea of writing a composition of a harmonizing nature, viz., to gather all the homiletical disquisitions of the Talmud (the "derashot") and explain them in a rationalistic manner so as to remove what appears on the surface to be offensive
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