Maimonides' vision of Judaism was deeply elitist, but at the same time profoundly universalistic and very critical of the dominant Jewish culture of his day. While focusing on that critique, Kellner demonstrates how Maimonides used philosophy in order to purify a corrupt and paganised religion.

The life of Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) remains a mystery to many within evangelical Christianity. However, he is lauded as a second Moses by many within modern Judaism. Does he deserve that title? Maimonides’s via negativa created a rationale for rejecting the messiahship claims of Jesus in Rabbinic Judaism. Therefore, this book seeks to illustrate that Maimonides, in his desire to create an anti-Christian apologetic regarding the incarnation, fashioned a Judaism that does not reflect the truths of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and developed a Judaism that was untenable for the Jewish people of the twenty-first century. Many Jewish people today are turning in a thousand and one different directions for spiritual answers, but not in the only way that will offer the way to God: Jesus of Nazareth (John 14:6). This work examines the history of Maimonides, his teachings, and an apologetic approach to bring the gospel back to the Jewish people (Rom 1:16).

T. M. Rudavsky presents a new account of the development of Jewish philosophy from the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth, viewed as part of an ongoing dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. Her aim is to provide a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought. This is reflected in particular philosophical controversies across a wide range of issues in metaphysics, language, cosmology, and philosophical theology. The book illuminates our understanding of medieval thought by offering a much richer view of the Jewish philosophical tradition, informed by the considerable recent research that has been done in this area.

ON MAIMONIDES, like other titles in the Wadsworth Philosopher's Series, offers a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to this philosopher's most important ideas. Presenting the most important insights of well over a hundred seminal philosophers in both the Eastern and Western traditions, the Wadsworth Philosophers Series contains volumes written by scholars noted for their excellence in teaching and for their well-versed comprehension of each featured philosopher's major works and contributions. These titles have proven valuable in a number of ways. Serving as standalone texts when tackling a philosophers' original sources or as helpful resources for focusing philosophy students' engagements with these philosopher's often conceptually daunting works, these titles have also gained extraordinary popularity with a lay readership and quite often serve as "refreshers" for philosophy instructors.

Moses Maimonides—a proud heir to the Andalusian tradition of Aristotelian philosophy—crafted a bold and original philosophical interpretation of Torah and Judaism. His son Abraham Maimonides is a fascinating maverick whose Torah commentary mediates between the philosophical interpretations of his father, the contextual approach of Biblical exegetes such as Saadya, and the Sufi-flavored illuminative mysticism of his Egyptian Pietist circle. This pioneering study explores the intersecting approaches of Moses and Abraham Maimonides to the spark of divine illumination and revelation of the divine name Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, “I am that I am / I will be who I will be.”

This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.

Explores the wider aspects of the rabbinic mind.