As to Maimonides ' Guide for the Perplexed, Nahmanides stated that it was intended not for those of unshaken belief, but for those who had been led astray by the non-Jewish philosophical works of Aristotle and Galen.

Ironically, while Maimonides refrained from citing sources out of concern for brevity ( or perhaps because he designed his work to be used without studying the Talmud or other sources first ), the result has often been the opposite of what he intended.

Thus the received version may not be the text that Maimonides intended us to read.

He uses the name Yeshua for Jesus ( an attested equivalent of the name unlike Yeshu ) and follows it with HaNotzri showing that regardless of what meaning had been intended in the Talmudic occurrences of this term, Maimonides understood it as an equivalent of Nazarene.

Maimonides ' 12th Century work, Guide for the Perplexed is in part intended as an explanation of the passages Ma ' aseh Bereshit and Ma ' aseh Merkabah.

Furthermore, the current text of the Talmud is fairly corrupt with numerous textual variants ; from this, coupled with Maimonides ' indications that he had far more accurate and complete Talmudic texts available to him, they conclude that the Mishneh Torah provides the best access to what the Talmud must originally have intended.

Maimonides wrote that, regardless whether a slave is Jewish or not, " The way of the pious and the wise is to be compassionate and to pursue justice, not to overburden or oppress a slave, and to provide them from every dish and every drink.

" On the topic of omniscience and free will, Jacobs writes that in the medieval period, three views were put forth: Maimonides, who wrote that God had foreknowledge and man is free ; Gersonides, who wrote that man is free and consequently God does not have complete knowledge, and Hasdai Crescas, who wrote in Or Adonai that God has complete foreknowledge and consequently God is not really free.

His " Prayer-book ," which was made familiar by the many extracts quoted from it by the liturgical writers of the Middle Ages, and which served as the model for Saadia's and Maimonides ' own prayer rituals, was published complete for the first time in Warsaw, in the year 1865, by N. N. Coronel, under the title " Seder Rab Amram Gaon.

Eventually, Maimonides ' 13 principles of faith became the mostly widely accepted statement of belief.

Importantly, Maimonides, while enumerating the above, added the following caveat " There is no difference between Biblical statement ' his wife was Mehithabel ' 10, 6 on the one hand an " unimportant " verse, and ' Hear, O Israel ' on the other an " important " verse ... anyone who denies even such verses thereby denies God and shows contempt for his teachings more than any other skeptic, because he holds that the Torah can be divided into essential and non-essential parts ..." The uniqueness of the 13 fundamental beliefs was that even a rejection out of ignorance placed one outside Judaism, whereas the rejection of the rest of Torah must be a conscious act to stamp one as an unbeliever.

Rosh Amanah ends with the statement that " Maimonides compiled these articles merely in accordance with the fashion of other nations, which set up axioms or fundamental principles for their science ".

In their view, the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides is the most accurate and therefore most authoritative statement of Talmudic law, and is in itself a sufficient reference without resort to any other source.

This work, devoted to the championship of the Maimonidean thirteen articles of belief against the attacks of Crescas and Albo, ends with the statement that Maimonides compiled these articles merely in accordance with the fashion of other nations, which set up axioms or fundamental principles for their science.

Here RABaD is not content with merely correcting the statement of Maimonides, but he declares that, in his opinion, Maimonides deserves the ban for the calumnious views he expresses concerning these Biblical personages ( Yad.

Some medieval philosophical rationalists, such as Maimonides and Gersonides held that not every statement in Genesis is meant literally.

This interpretation of the Talmudic statement, or the acceptance of the statement itself, is disputed ( for various reasons ) by the Ba ' alei Tosafot ( based on the Jerusalem Talmud ), Maimonides, Rabbeinu Ephraim, Ba ' al HaMa ' or, Ran, Orchot Chaim, Be ' er Hagolah, Magen Avraham, Taz, Rema, Vilna Gaon, Maharsha, Rashash, Tzeidah LaDerech, Hagahot Maimoniyot, Ra ' avyah, Korban N ' tan ' el, Bach, Maharil, P ' ri M ' gadim, Kol Bo, Chochmat Mano ' ach, Mishnah Berurah ( by the Chafetz Chaim ), and others.

Rabbinic Judaism's scholars, such as Maimonides, write that people who deny the divine authority of the Oral Torah are to be considered among the heretics.

Kahane's legislative proposals focused on transferring the Arab population out from the Land of Israel, revoking Israeli citizenship from non-Jews, and banning Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations, based on the Code of Jewish Law compiled by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah.

Maimonides, perhaps the greatest codifier of Jewish Law, wrote in Laws of the Chosen House ch 7 Law 15 " One may bring a dead body in to the ( lower sanctified areas of the ) Temple Mount and there is no need to say that the ritually impure ( from the dead ) may enter there, because the dead body itself can enter ".

In a letter addressed to the French rabbis, he draws attention to the virtues of Maimonides and holds that Maimonides ' Mishne Torah – his Code of Jewish Law – not only shows no leniency in interpreting prohibitions within Jewish law, but may even be seen as more stringent, which in Nahmanides ' eyes was a positive factor.

** Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors.

** Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors.

* Ritual Purity in the Torah and in the Code of Jewish Law of Maimonides

* Laws of Judaism concerning wine From the Torah and Maimonides ’ Code of Jewish Law

According to Maimonides, he wrote the Guide " to promote the true understanding of the real spirit of the Law, to guide those religious persons who, adhering to the Torah, have studied philosophy and are embarrassed by the contradictions between the teachings of philosophy and the literal sense of the Torah ,"

*" Maimonides on equity: reconsidering the Guide for the Perplexted III: 34 " in the Journal of Law and Religion v. XVII, nos.

The intensity of debate spurred Catholic Church interventions against " heresy " and even a general confiscation of Rabbinic texts and in reaction, the defeat of the more radical interpretations of Maimonides and at least amongst Ashkenazi Jews, a tendency not so much to repudiate as simply to ignore the specifically philosophical writings and to stress instead the Rabbinic and halachic writings ; even these writings often included considerable philosophical chapters or discussions in support of halachic observance, as David Hartman observes Maimonides made clear " the traditional support for a philosophical understanding of God both in the Aggadah of Talmud and in the behavior of the hasid pious Jew " and so Maimonidean thought continues to influence traditionally observant Jews.

This work was so important in Jewish law that Yosef Karo included the ROSH together with Maimonides and Isaac Alfasi as one of the three major poskim ( decisors ) considered in determining the final ruling in his Shulkhan Arukh.

Maimonides, and other rabbinical commentators, extrapolated this into the conclusion that, if they exist, then male sons and their descendants are the heirs of an individual, but if they do not it would be any daughters or their descendants, and if these do not exist then it would be the individual's father, and if he is no longer alive then the rule concerning heirs applies to him-the father's sons ( the individual's brothers ) and their descendants have priority, followed by the father's daughters ( the individual's sisters ), followed by the father's father ( the individual's grandfather ), and so on.

In the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides so clarifies his understanding of monotheism and idolatry that in its light even certain Jewish communities of his time, and today, become suspect of idolatry.

In the introduction Obadiah says that he was induced to write his work by the fact that even so great a man as Maimonides had expressed the opinion that all the theories of Aristotle concerning the sublunary world are absolutely correct.

" ( The Baghdadi Jews came to India in the 18th century, and it was only then that the Bene Israel Jews of India were " discovered " and taught mainstream Judaism by the Cochinis and Baghdadis, so Maimonides must be referring to the Cochini Jews.

Unlike many of the later talmide ha-Rambam, the original Dor Daim were not committed to the view that all local custom, whether Sephardi or Ashkenazi or from any other source, is totally illegitimate to the extent that it differs from the exact views of Maimonides, so they preserved certain non-Maimonidean Yemenite peculiarities in minor matters.

From the practical point of view Jewish law as codified by Maimonides is as compatible with modern conditions as any later code: if anything more so, as later Jewish law has become enmeshed in many unnecessary intellectual tangles.

Maimonides reasoned that the bleeding and loss of protective covering rendered the penis weakened and in so doing had the effect of reducing a man's lustful thoughts and making sex less pleasurable.

It is one of the mysteries of our intellectual history that these explicit statements of Maimonides, together with his other extensive instructions on how to read his book, have been so widely ignored.

According to Fox, Maimonides carefully assembled the Guide " so as to protect people without a sound scientific and philosophical education from doctrines that they cannot understand and that would only harm them, while making the truths available to students with the proper personal and intellectual preparation.

There is no consistent view in classical rabbinical literature as to the order of the names ; the Jerusalem Targum, for example, argued that the names appeared in the order of the birth of each tribe's patriarch according to the Book of Genesis ; Maimonides argued that the names were all engraved on the first stone, with the words are the tribes of Jeshurun being engraved on the last stone ; kabbalistic writers such Hezekiah ben Manoah and Bahya ben Asher argued that only six letters from each name was present on each stone, together with a few letters from the names of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, or from the phrase are the tribes of Jeshurun, so that there were seventy-two letters in total ( 72 being a very significant number in Kabbalistic thought ).

Maimonides taught that if the sages in Palestine would agree to ordain one of themselves, they could do so, and that the man of their choice could then ordain others.

For example, in discussing Aristotle's view that the universe had existed literally forever, he argued that there was no convincing rational proof one way or the other, so that he ( Maimonides ) was free to accept, and therefore did accept, the Biblical view that the universe had come into being at a definite time ; but that had Aristotle's case been convincing on scientific grounds he would have been able to reinterpret Genesis accordingly.

Several prominent Jewish writers of the Middle Ages took offense at the idea that Jews might be enslaved ; Joseph Caro and Maimonides both argue that calling a Jew slave was so offensive that it should be punished by excommunication.

It is clear that ibn Megas was a great scholar: Maimonides in the introduction to his Mishnah commentary says " the Talmudic learning of this man amazes every one who understands his words and the depth of his speculative spirit ; so that it might almost be said of him that his equal has never existed.

The Talmud argues that the death of the high priest formed an atonement, as the death of pious individuals counted as an atonement, and in its view, the high priest was extremely pious ; Maimonides argued that the death of the high priest was simply an event so upsetting to the Israelites that they dropped all thoughts of vengeance.