Davies Review Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon

Book Reviews (e.g. short articles), popular publications, unpublished master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, unpublished photographs from the excavations, personal communication, and other sources. While Werlin is right to highlight that this book cannot replace final excavation reports on these synagogues, it nevertheless provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive study of these buildings, significantly enhancing our knowledge of Jewish society in the late antique south. If one must identify weaknesses, they would include (as Werlin himself notes) that the boundaries of “southern” Palestine are artificial. Rather, what binds these synagogues together is a product of modern choices—they have been excavated and relatively overlooked by scholars, who tend to replicate rabbinic literature’s “northern bias.” Moreover, the pairing of synagogues by subregion seems, in light of Werlin’s negative findings on regionalism, to be artificial and unnecessary. One last quibble is that it is not always clear which sites Werlin has visited, or which synagogue’s finds and records may still exist but were unavailable to him (and the reasons for their unavailability). This would have been useful for future research on these synagogues, providing a road map for scholars to add more pieces to the puzzle. This book is very well organized and clearly written, as Werlin has made this study accessible to scholars of religion (especially ancient Judaism) who do not necessarily specialize in archaeology. Encyclopedic in fashion, it constitutes an essential reference work on the southern synagogues, making it an indispensable resource for the study of ancient synagogues and late antique Palestine. This book also contributes to our knowledge of Jewish-Christian relations (e.g. evidence that Jews and Christians shared artisans in the construction of their religious edifices); iconoclasm (evidenced in three of the synagogues); art (e.g. development of the menorah as a symbol); the reception of certain biblical motifs (e.g. Daniel); and an array of other topics to which synagogue studies typically contribute. It will be of interest to scholars of Roman- and Byzantine-era archaeology, biblical studies, and religions of late antiquity, particularly ancient Judaism. Gregg E. Gardner The University of British Columbia • • • M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN E RAS James A. Diamond. Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. viii + 319 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009417000228 Probably more than any other post-talmudic author, Maimonides is widely recognized as an integral part of the Jewish canon. Although his code did not become the primary text for studying Halakhah, as was his stated hope, the fact that it is referenced in the Vilna Talmud attests to its great importance. But 249 Book Reviews halakhic expertise was only one of Maimonides’s many gifts, and in some circles he is better known as a philosopher. Given that reactions to his philosophy were often negative, the impact of the Guide of the Perplexed might have been more marginal. However, James Diamond makes a strong case to include the Guide in the canon of Jewish texts as well. Diamond begins by explaining some of the Guide’s features that inextricably connect it with the Jewish tradition, and also make it ripe to take its own place as a fundamental text that later authors use in creative ways. Most of the book deals with episodes exemplifying that interaction. The exception is a chapter about Maimonides on loving God (chap. 2), which, as well as offering a detailed and important analysis, anticipates themes addressed later in the book. Respondents to Maimonides are presented in chronological order, and the first is a well-known antagonist, Nah.manides, who, even while opposing Maimonides’s world view, is indebted to the Guide (chap. 3). Diamond shows that Nah.manides formulated his explanations of Abraham’s particularity by adopting Maimonides’s account and altering it in order to teach a thoroughly different understanding of Jewish peoplehood. Chapter 4 considers the Ritva (R. Yom Tov b. Abraham Ishbili), an especially welcome section, since it deals with a relatively unknown aspect of his work. Illustrating an important element of Diamond’s story, Ritva sympathizes with Nah.manides, but nevertheless defends Maimonides and argues that there are various acceptable ways to believe. Moreover, his strategy includes explaining how Nah.manides did not properly understand Maimonides’s thought or the way in which the Guide is written. From the Ritva’s attempt to defend Maimonides, Diamond moves on to Isaac Abrabanel, whose lifelong engagement with Maimonides generated much writing on the Guide, alongside the rest of his voluminous output (chap. 5). Abrabanel also often defended Maimonides’s views against what he considered misinterpretations by commentators whom he thought distorted Maimonides’s positions in order to conform them to their own. While he disagreed with Maimonides about a number of matters, he continued to articulate his views with reference to him. For example, Abrabanel explains the story of the Akedah by subtly and respectfully subverting Maimonides’s interpretation, using it to advocate a relationship with the divine that distinguishes the two thinkers. Meir Ibn Gabbai, discussed in chapter 6, was less circumspect in his critique, explicitly opposing Maimonides’s theological positions. Nevertheless, Diamond shows that Ibn Gabbai offers alternative interpretations to precisely the same biblical terms that Maimonides explained in the Guide. Like other authors treated, he uses the same quotations as Maimonides and subverts their meaning. Ibn Gabbai objected to Maimonides’s use of “wisdom” to measure the Torah’s meaning, which allows us to segue into another critic who is also known for attacking the way in which Maimonides’s exegesis views Scripture in light of philosophy. Certain terms that Maimonides interprets are central to Spinoza’s critique, so that while Spinoza rejects Maimonides’s exegesis, in chapter 7 Diamond depicts him as a perceptive reader of the Guide, and shows that such a background enriches our understanding of the philosopher. The chapter finishes with a short account of Buber’s reaction to Spinoza and Maimonides. If any is needed, the example of Buber’s biblical exegesis 250 Book Reviews justifies including Spinoza in the canon that Diamond presents. These critics, Ibn Gabbai and Spinoza, were fundamental to later theological developments, although of different kinds, and, since they both use Maimonides as a foil, his influence might reasonably be seen to have been magnified through them. A different kind of interaction is displayed in the eighth chapter, on Herman Cohen. Whether or not Cohen’s reading is faithful to Maimonides is still an ongoing discussion. Diamond presents it as an appropriation, which could be considered a critique that pays homage to how central Maimonides is to the entire Jewish tradition. Another nineteenth-century writer is then included, the Nez.iv (R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin) (chap. 9). Like Ibn Gabbai, he seems to have been particularly offended by Maimonides’s extreme theocentrism, expressed by his insistence in the Guide, seemingly contrary to a position adopted in an earlier work, that God’s purpose in creation is nothing other than an act of pure will, and that each being is created purely for its own sake. Nez.iv emphasizes instead the Torah’s goal and the righteous person as the pinnacle of creation. As opposed to Maimonides, he locates the goal of creation as loving God in communal practice rather than dispassionate solitude. The final chapter considers Abraham Isaac Kook’s response, which fits with Kook’s overall vision of the way in which knowledge progresses. It corroborates the claim that Kabbalah cannot be severed from the philosophical tradition. Diamond’s book shows that in order to understand Jewish philosophy, it helps to be properly conversant in Maimonides’s work. He is able to show how later authors play with Maimonides’s prooftexts because he is already deeply familiar with the Guide. In the same way that it is necessary to detect biblical allusions and partial quotations if one is to understand Jewish writers, it is necessary also to be aware of how Maimonides employed arguments and prooftexts in order to understand the full import of later thinkers’ comments. The work is extremely impressive, particularly since the background learning required to read all of the thinkers adequately is highly varied. Diamond is therefore able to expose how a number of Jewish authorities are indebted to Maimonides, even though they are not usually connected in the scholarly literature. I can imagine a number of criticisms. There will inevitably be quibbles over interpretations of each author treated, including Maimonides himself. One might also object that appealing to a limited number of figures, on a limited number of subjects, does not establish that Maimonides was omnipresent in all that followed him, so perhaps Diamond overstates his case. But maybe it is enough to make the point about those figures that continue to be studied as authoritative in different sections of today’s Jewish world, and that deal with issues of wide concern to the religious Jewish public. On the other hand, it could be argued that the canon examined is too narrow, involving only those texts that have become well known in the Ashkenazic world, excluding other traditions, such as the Yemenite reception. There is also no extended engagement with Maimonides’s reception in hasidic thought, although the chapter on Rav Kook includes relevant elements, and there are some brief discussions in the notes. However, this last point is not a critique of the work carried out. This is already a large book that covers a huge amount, including texts from disparate backgrounds that require 251 Book Reviews different sorts of expertise. If such gaps as appear are judged to be significant, that only makes Diamond’s overall argument for Maimonides’s importance for later Jewish thought even stronger. Daniel Davies Universität Hamburg • • • David Gillis. Reading Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015. 448 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941700023X So much has been written about Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah that one might wonder whether any paradigm-shifting insights could still be added. It is certainly difficult to imagine an intriguing original thesis that explains the whole Mishneh Torah in an entirely new way. Yet David Gillis has produced just such a work. Gillis’s thesis is that the structure of the Mishneh Torah emulates the cosmic structure of the universe as described by Maimonides in “Laws of the Foundations of the Torah.” The fourteen books of the Mishneh Torah imitate the ten astronomical spheres and the four elements that make up life as we know it, according to the Islamic Aristotelian description of the universe. The ten astronomical spheres themselves correspond to ten separate intellects that emanate from God. This hierarchical depiction of the universe understands God to affect each level of existence, whether separate intellect, sphere, or material being, even as each level of existence directly affects the level below it. Each level (except for the first, God) is thus lower than the one above it, but affected by the higher level to become like it, that is, in Gillis’s language, to return to it. Gillis understands the entire Mishneh Torah to follow a similar schema: the Book of Knowledge, the first of the Mishneh Torah’s fourteen books, affects the structure of all subsequent books, even as each book follows directly from the previous book. Indeed, Gillis divides up the Book of Knowledge, and, while it is harder for me to see the cosmic significance of its five treatises, its first section, the “Laws of the Foundations of the Torah,” is said to resonate throughout the whole first book and indeed through the remaining fourteen books. Gillis identifies the first ten books of the Mishneh Torah as concerning laws between man and God, and he connects these books to the cosmic emanation. This emanation plays out in such legal concepts as love (which decreases as one is removed from the Book of Knowledge), fear (which increases with that removal), and holiness (which becomes less internal and personal as one is removed from the Book of Knowledge and more external, relating, e.g., to the temple). The final four books of the Mishneh Torah constitute a kind of return to the source of emanation. They begin with criminal law and move to a description of the messianic, or as Gillis puts is, “from Dystopia to Utopia” (278–85). On the whole, then, the Mishneh Torah presents a microcosm of 252