Maimonides and the Geonites

Jerusalem: Sura Publication, 1967. First edition. Hardcover. g. Quarto. 222pp. (2). Original printed wrappers over cloth with gold lettering on boards and spine. Printer's device on both title-pages. Fascinating work in which Meir Havazeleth, in a collection of his Hebrew articles, examines the use of geonic literature by Maimonides. Text is in Hebrew with English introduction. Some age wear on wrappers with spine and edges of covers age-toned and partly chipped. Minor shelf wear. Wrappers in overall fair, binding in good, interior in very good condition. R. Moses Maimonides (Rambam) was a 12th century Jewish philosopher and halachic legal scholar. A highly controversial figure, both during his lifetime and after his death, but generally acknowledged as the preeminent Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Spain but fled as a child due to Almohad persecution of Jews. He eventually settled in Egypt where he served as a rabbi, physician and philosopher. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah, his only work not in Arabic, still carries canonical authority, particularly within the Yemenite Jewish community, as the codification of Talmudic law. His other work includes a commentary on the Mishnah entitled Kitab al-Siraj, Kitab al-Fara'I, a book on precepts, and the philosophical work Dalalat al-Ha'irin, known in Hebrew as the Moreh Nevukhim, The Guide to the Perplexed. The major premise is an attempted philosophical/theological reconciliation of the Hebrew Bible and Greek knowledge and explaining away anthropomorphic and antropopathic terms in the Bible. This work came to play a central role in all subsequent major controversies over philosophy within the Jewish community during the Middle Ages. (Inventory #: 26579)