Maimonides Final Report Quiz and Discussion Questions

Last time we spoke about Maimonides, it was stated not only by I, but by many other intellectuals that Maimonides was and still is one of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time, and while that still is true, he also held some views that caused some controversy during his time. Maimonides distinguished man in two kinds of intelligence, the first being material knowledge and the second being immaterial knowledge. Material knowledge is knowledge that is dependent on and influenced by the body, while immaterial knowledge is independent of the body. That’s not controversial in and of itself, but he believed that the knowledge of God is a form of knowledge that develops within the immaterial knowledge, which grants an immaterial and spiritual nature onto a person and bestows the soul with immortality. That belief developed into a full-blown controversy and he ended up being charged as a heretic, which is someone that holds a belief that is strongly opposing to whatever established beliefs or customs there may be within a particular religion. I thought that with how in most of his works, what he said is always what he believes, but he actually ended up changing his position to basically a compromise that stated that physical resurrection may occur some time in the future, but it isn’t permanent or general.

However, the more that I read about what I now know is called the Maimonidean Controversy, I learned that the debate wasn’t necessarily over the topic of resurrection, but mainly of how Maimonides approached the topic of religion with knowledge and rationalism. People for so long believed faith was faith, and that that was unmoving, but Maimonides combined Judaism with Aristotelian thought. He doesn’t go so far as to abandon traditional Jewish views, but that he simply attempts to reconcile the teaches of the Torah to Aristotelian thought. How people reacted to matters such at this were different compared to how we respond now. Maimonides hypothetically led in combining religion with originally unpopular opinions. It seems unreasonable to judge someone so harshly for wanting to combine something as fundamental as religion with rationalism, but the reason people were so upset was because, with the reasoning Maimonides had in his writings that were influenced by Aristotelian ideas, people that followed Judaism were fearful that these teachings would be sufficient cause to bring suspicion to all their religious books and teaching and perhaps bring destruction to what they believed as a whole. Eventually though, those that judged Maimonides either forgot about what they were arguing about, or some even adopted what he was saying, because again, it seems unreasonable to judge someone for wanting to combine religion with rationalism. However, it has been stated that Maimonides has recently been talked about in a controversial way within the first few years of the 21^st century. This is because there are certain Orthodox groups that do not want to place Maimonides in the center of their curriculum in place of other classical codes because some people still do not agree with what Maimonides believed.

Quiz Questions:

1. What were the two types of knowledge that Maimonides distinguished between in man?

2. What type of knowledge does Maimonides believes bestows a person's soul with immortality?

3. In his compromised position, did Maimonides believe that physical resurrection was permanent or general?

4. What did Maimonides try to reconcile with the teachings of the Torah?


Discussion Questions:

1. Which type of knowledge do you believe is more important, material or immaterial knowledge?

2. Which view do you believe in more, the belief that the knowledge of God bestows immortality onto a soul, or that physical resurrection may occur, but it is not permanent or general?

3. Do you believe that certain groups shouldn't teach something because it is something they don't believe in? Can this relate to certain groups in our time now?