THE JEWISH TRANSMITTORS

We have already seen that the Jews took a prominent part in bringing a knowledge of philosophical research from Asia to Spain, and Ibn Jabirul (Avencebrol) takes his place in the line of transmission by which Spanish Islam was brought into contact with these studies. This did not end the participation of the Jews in philosophical work, but their subsequent writers do not form part of the regular series of Aristotelian students influencing the Muslim world, but are rather confined to Jewish circles. Yet they are of an importance wider than merely sectarian interests, for it was by means of Jewish disciples of Ibn Rushd that he was raised to a position of much greater importance than he has ever enjoyed in the Muslim world. Amongst the Jews, indeed, there arose a strong Averroist school, which later on was the chief means of introducing Ibn Rushd’s theories to Latin scholasticism. As we shall see later the transmission of philosophy from Arabic to Latin surroundings falls into two stages: in the earlier the Arabic material passes directly, and the works used are those which had attained a leading importance in Islam, but in the later stage the Jews were the[Pg 262] intermediaries, and thus the choice of text-books and authorities was largely influenced by an existing Jewish scholasticism.

Ibn Jabirul shows the Aristotelian philosophy introduced to Jewish surroundings, just as Sa`id al-Fayyumi in Mesopotamia shows the entrance of Mu`tazilite discussions amongst the Jews. In fact, all the intellectual experiences of the Muslim community were repeated amongst the Jews. In Islam the Mu`tazilites and the philosophers were followed by the scholastics, who took their final form under al-Ghazali, and so in Judaism also al-Ghazali has his parallel.

The founder of an orthodox Jewish scholasticism was the Spanish Jew, Jehuda hal-Levi (d. 540 A.H. = 1145 A.D.), who lived during the Murabit rule and the coming of the Muwahhids. His teaching is known by a work entitled Sefer ha-Kuzari, which consists of five essays, supposed to be dialogues between the King of the Chazars and a Jewish visitor to his court. These dialogues discuss various topics of a philosophical and political character. The study of philosophy is commended, but it is pointed out that good conduct is not attained by philosophy, which is occupied with scientific investigations, and many of these have no direct bearing upon the duties of practical life; the best means of promoting right conduct is religion, which is the established tradition of wisdom revealed to men of ancient times. Even in speculative matters a surer guidance is often[Pg 263] furnished by religious tradition than by the speculations of philosophers. God created all things from nothing; the attempt to explain the presence of imperfection and evil in the world by the theory of the eternity of matter, or by the operation of laws of nature is futile; those laws themselves must refer back to God. The difficulty arising from the mingling of evil with good in creation is admitted; the real solution is unknown, but it must be maintained that creation was the work of God in spite of the difficulties which this presents.

As to the nature and attributes of God, the distinction which Sa`id al-Fayyumi tried to make between the essential and other attributes is untenable. The attributes stated in the Old Testament may be applied to God because they are revealed, which is exactly the same teaching as that of al-Ash`ari and al-Ghazali. These attributes are either referring to active qualities, or to relative, or to negative. Those which are active and those which are relative are used metaphorically; we do not know their real significance.

The fifth essay is more especially directed against the philosophers as teaching doctrines subversive of revelation. In the first place he disapproves the theory of emanations; the work of creation was directly performed by God without any intermediary; if there were emanations, why did they stop short at the lunar sphere? This refers to the descriptions given by the Arabic writers who endeavour to explain[Pg 264] the successive emanations from the First Cause as reaching down to different spheres. He opposes also the attempt of the Mutakallimin to reconcile philosophy and theology as tending to undermine the truths of revealed religion, so that he takes a more reactionary position than al-Ghazali. This was inevitable, for Jewish thought had as yet been much less influenced by philosophy than was the case with the Muslims. He objects also to the description of the soul as intellect, more it would appear because common usage confined “intellectual activity” too much to philosophical speculation, and especially he protested against the implication that only souls of philosophers were finally united to the Agent Intellect. The soul of man is a spiritual substance and imperishable; it does not win immortality by intellectual activity but is necessarily immortal by its own nature. He admits, however, that the passive soul in man is influenced by the Agent Intellect, which he seems to regard as the wisdom of God personified. Generally, therefore, Hal-Levi defined Jewish orthodoxy as against the teachings of the philosophers: he recognises the force of philosophical speculation, but is himself distinctly conservative. God was literally the creator, and no philosophical definition of creation which tended to explain it otherwise than according to traditional belief was permissible. But Hal-Levi does not seem to have had any great influence outside Judaism, and his work rather tends to show how far Jewish thought of the 6th cent. of[Pg 265] the Hijra was out of sympathy with current philosophical speculation, though no longer ignorant of it.

It was in Spain that the Jews especially distinguished themselves as physicians, reproducing and extending the investigations of the Arabic authorities, who were pupils of the Nestorians and Jews in the first place. The most distinguished of these Spanish Jews who became leaders in medical science was Ibn Zuhr (d. 595 A.H. = 1199 A.D.), commonly known to the mediæval West as “Avenzoar.” He was a native of Seville and member of a family of physicians. Jewish philosophy does not take a leading place until the appearance of Abu Imran Moses b. Maymun b. `Abdullah (d. 601 A.H. = 1204 A.D.), a contemporary and follower of Ibn Rushd and the one who did most to establish an Averroist school, and so passed on his work and influence to Latin Christendom. He was the son of a pupil of Hal-Levi, and, it is said, a pupil of one of Ibn Bajja’s pupils. His family retired to Africa to avoid the persecution of the Muwahhids and settled for a time in Fez, then removed to Egypt. It was whilst he was at Cairo that Ibn Maymun, or Maimonides as he is more commonly called by European writers, first heard of Ibn Rushd.

His chief work is known as Dalalat al-Ha´irin, “the Guide of the Perplexed,” which, like all his other books, was produced in Arabic; about the time of his death this work was translated into Hebrew by[Pg 266] Samuel b. Tibbon as Moreh Nebukin. The Arabic text, edited by Munk, was published at Paris (3 vols.) in 1856-66, and in 1884 an English translation by Friedländer was published in London. Next to this in importance is the treatise Maqalah fi-t-Tawhid, a treatise on the unity of God, of which a Hebrew translation was made in the 14th cent. A.D. His other works were mainly medical, and include treatises “on poisons and their antidotes,” “on hæmorrhoids,” “on asthma,” and a commentary on Hippocrates.

Maimonides’ teaching reproduces the substance of that already associated with al-Farabi and Ibn Sina put into a Jewish form. God is the Intellect, the ens intelligens, and the intelligibile: He is the necessary First Cause and the permanent source. He is essentially and necessarily one, and attributes cannot be so used as to imply plurality: only those attributes which describe activity are admissible, not those which imply relations between God and the creature. Like Ibn Rushd he disapproves of the Mutakallimin, whom he regards as mere opportunists in their philosophy and without any staple principles, besides which their method of compromise does not face fairly the law of causality. The Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter cannot, however, be admitted; creation must have been from nothing, as follows from the law of causality; that such was the case cannot be proved, but every contrary supposition is untenable. All the properties of[Pg 267] matter, the laws of nature, etc., had their beginning at creation. On the first day God created the beginnings (reshit), that is to say the intelligences, from which proceeded the several spheres, and introduced movement, so that on this day the whole universe and all its contents came into existence. On the succeeding days these contents were disposed in order and developed; then on the seventh day God rested, which means that He ceased from active operation and laid the universe under the control of natural laws, which guided it henceforth.

The teaching of Maimonides shows a somewhat modified form of the system already developed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina adapted to Jewish beliefs. It had a rapid and wide success, spreading through the greater part of the Jewish community in his own lifetime. But this success was not without some opposition—the synagogues of Aragon, Catalonga, and of Provence, where a very large number of Jews had sought refuge from the Muwahhids; the synagogue at Narbonne, on the other hand, defended him. It was not until the following century, and chiefly by the efforts of David Kimchi, that Maimonides was at length generally accepted as the leading doctor of the Jewish church.

Although Maimonides was known to the Latin scholastics, it was not his work nor that of any other Jewish teacher which really made the Jews important to mediæval western thought so much as the work they did in popularising Ibn Rushd, whom they[Pg 268] called “the soul and intelligence of Aristotle.” Jewish MSS. of Aristotle are rarely found without ............