The Maimonidean Controversy, Part 1

Recent posts have talked about different individual's attitude toward Maimonides and what they did about it—sometimes with radical consequences.

Besides studying all the known Jewish religious texts, Moses ben Maimon (1138 - 1204) was a rabbi, knew medicine (he was the personal physician of Saladin) and astronomy. He became well-known and liked in Egypt (he lived in Cairo for a time), but he also had some very vocal critics.

The chief issue is that he took a rationalist-philosophical approach to the world and came to conclusions that were contradictory to what many believed. A couple that I have mentioned before were:

•The power of prophecy does not require intervention by God. Any human being, through the application of logic and reason, study and meditation, has the potential to become a prophet.

•In a treatise on resurrection, he emphasizes that God would not violate the laws of Nature which He has created, and therefore any bodily resurrection would only be temporary; true resurrection to come is spiritual.

He really got under people's skin when he criticized the Geonim, the rabbinic scholars who took donations from sponsors. Maimonides felt they should learn a profession and support themselves, as he did.

After his death, his The Guide for the Perplexed was translated into Hebrew (he had been writing in Arabic). Jewish scholars around the Mediterranean who were familiar with Arabic philosophy could see and parse the influences on Maimonides' work, but when his work became accessible to European Jews it kicked off a new stage of controversy.

In the early13th century, European scholars were unfamiliar with concepts of science and philosophy. Aristotle's works were just being re-discovered in the West thanks to Arabic translations in Spain from the original Greek versions. Other works of philosophy were starting to spread because 1204 was not only Maimonides' death but also the Sack of Constantinople, which started bringing Greek treasures—including intellectual treasures—to the West.

I'll go into more about how the controversy heated up in Europe tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can read a little more about Maimonides and the intellectual evolution of Western Europe in my post on Scholasticism.

False Messiahs, Part 2

Yesterday we started looking at some of the predictions about the Jewish Messiah appearing in the 12th century. The 13th century had its own claimants as well. Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia was one.

Born in Aragon in 1240, he was taught the Torah and Talmud by his father after the family moved to Navarre. When Abulafia was 18, his father died, and the young man began wandering the world, eventually deciding to go to Israel and find the Ten Lost Tribes. Unfortunately, the Crusades had made a journey to Israel dangerous, so he returned to Europe, studied the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides, and started having visions.

He studied Kabbalah, and immersed himself in the Sefer Yetzirah, finding in it the path to perfection for a human being. In 1280 he went to Rome to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism. Hearing of his intention, the pope gave orders to burn the heretic as soon as he arrived. Before Abulafia reached Rome, however, he heard that Nicholas died of a stroke, so he returned to Messina where he was imprisoned for a month by the Order of Friars Minor.

In Messina he is reported to have declared himself a prophet and the Messiah, which angered the local Jewish congregation. A letter against Abulafia written by the influential Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona—who was making it his life's work to speak out against the rise of false Messiahs—helped put an end to Abulafia's career. Up until 1291 he was in Malta and writing his own works on meditation and symbolism, after which he disappears from records.

The other major "Messiah" of this century was Nissim ben Abraham, whom we discussed in the story of Abner of Burgos.

It is interesting that there was enough concern about false Messiahs that Shlomo ben Aderet had a career about denouncing and disproving them. Let's take a look at Shlomo next, the "Rabbi of Spain."

(The illustration is from William Holman Hunt's 1860 "The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple.")

False Messiahs, Part 1

Yesterday's post explained how Abner of Burgos' conversion to Christianity from Judaism may have started with doubts after treating patients who were distraught after a promised Jewish Messiah failed to appear.

As it turns out, there were more than a couple claims about the appearance of the Messiah. The 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 8th centuries had their share. In the Middle Ages, there were quite a few, some documented, some not so much, like the one reported to have been simply killed by the French in 1087.

A teacher in Morocco, Moses ben Abraham Dar'ī, believed a Messiah would appear at Passover in 1127 to specifically free the Jews in the territories controlled by the Almoravid dynasty.

Menaḥem ben Solomon was born in Iraq. Growing up he studied the Torah and Talmud and, calling himself David Alroy or David el-David (meaning "David son of King/David") claimed to be the Messiah, calling on Jews to rise up against their caliph and then go to Jerusalem where they would free it from the Muslims. (Yes, a Jewish crusade in the 1160s!)

Stories of his results differ, but Benjamin of Tudela wrote that the sultan had David brought to him, asked him "Are you the king of the Jews?" to which David replied "I am." whereupon he was thrown into prison. Three days later he "rose again"; that is, he miraculously appeared in the midst of the sultan's council, then evaded arrest by turning invisible, making the 10-day journey back to his native town, Amadiya, in one day. The sultan threatened to put all Jews in his domain to death unless David surrendered. The governor of Amadiya bribed David's father-in-law to kill David.

Maimonides in his Iggeret Teman (Epistle to Yemen) tells the story of a Yemenite Messiah. Born in Fez in Morocco, he grew up at a time when the Muslims were trying to get all Jews to convert. The Yemenite Messiah claimed the troubles this caused were a sign that a Messiah would soon appear to liberate them. He started preaching that property should be distributed to the poor and people should start repenting for their sins. After a year of becoming a public nuisance the Muslims arrested him. He himself suggested that they kill him so he could prove himself by returning to life. He was beheaded, and his story ends there.

I'll tell you a more tomorrow.

Abner of Burgos, Converso

Abner of Burgos (c.1270 – c.1347) converted to Christianity from Judaism around 1320, taking on the name Alfonso of Valladolid or "Master Alfonso." He was well into adulthood, so his conversion was not a rebellion against his parents' culture, nor was it a young man's quest for something "different," nor was it forced upon him by an oppressive Christian government. So what happened?

The Jewish belief in a messiah gave rise to many claims over the centuries that he was imminent. In Avila, in central Spain, a Jew named Nissim ben Abraham actively preached that the messiah would appear in 1295 on the last day of the month of Tammuz (which can fall in late June or early July). Nissim was said to be a simple man who was inspired by an angel and wrote a mystic work, "The Wonder of Wisdom."

Many were convinced by Nissim, and they eagerly awaited the messiah. Like predictions of the Second Coming or of the End of the World, no messiah appeared. What they experienced, however, was a rain of crosses that stuck to their clothing (so they described to Abner). The disappointment and depression that followed among Nissim's adherents was profound.

Abner, a scholar of the Bible and the Talmud as well as a doctor, found himself being turned to by these disappointed people, treating them and trying to assuage their grief. Curiously, his discussions with these people about the lack of a messiah and their report of the appearance of the Christian symbol made him think "outside the box" about Judaism and its promises.

In a post-conversion work by Abner, Moreh tsedeḳ ("Teacher of righteousness"), he described how some 25 years after Avila he had a dream/revelation of a man who told him to become a "teacher of righteousness." About three years later he had the same dream, but this time noticed that the man had crosses on his clothes. This was his tipping point: he chose to embrace Christianity. He became a Neo-Platonic Christian and wrote treatises against Judaism. He believed that his version of Christianity was superior to others' and to Judaism. He preached that conversion to Christianity was the only way for Jews to get out of their perpetual Exile.

He was appointed sacristan of the collegiate church of Valladolid. This made some Jews accuse him of converting for material gain. What they did not understand, however, was that a sacristan was far from a lucrative position. He wrote extensive works (not all extant, or available in English) supporting conversion of Jews. He also debated rabbis. His arguments to King Alfonso XI of Castile that a Jewish prayer, the Birkat haMinim, blasphemed the Christian God and cursed Christians, led to the prayers being declared forbidden as off February 1336. The Birkat declares a curse on all heretics (so he had an ironic point, I guess).

We have his works, but no record of his death. 1347 was the last known record of him publishing. It is possible that he was a victim of the Black Death.

There were a few claims of a Jewish Messiah in the Middle Ages (and earlier and later). We'll look at some of them tomorrow.

Ethiopia's Religions, Part 3

After the Christian conversion of the Kingdom of Aksum, and before the asylum given to some of the first Muslims, there were Jews in Aksum. Referred to in Ge'ez as Beta Israel ("House of Israel"), they were Jews who refused to convert to Christianity during the time of Ezana and Frumentius.

According to tradition, the Jews rebelled against the Christians and established an independent state in the Semien Mountains, but there is no evidence to support this. There are other traditions. One of them is that a Jewish queen named Judith made an alliance with some pagans, the Agaw, and invaded Aksum's capital city, destroying churches and monasteries. Again, there is no evidence for this.

A 9th-century Jewish merchant and traveler, Eldad ha-Dani (c.851 - 900), claimed one of the 12 Tribes of Israel, the Tribe of Dan, went down the Nile and established themselves in Ethiopia. An Ethiopian Jewish community is also mentioned by both Marco Polo and Benjamin of Tudela.

The earliest recorded reference is found in the chronicles of Emperor Amda Seyon of Ethiopia, who sent troops to Semien to deal with unrest among Jews "and others." Ethiopian history and Beta Israel tradition both agree that Emperor Yeshaq (1414 - 1429) exerted pressure on Jews in Ethiopia. After the Jews rebelled against this, Yeshaq divided them into three regions with commissioners to watch over them. Jews were told to convert or lose their lands, and they were given second-class status below Christians.

Separated from Israel, Ethiopian Jews were different from the Middle Eastern brethren. A letter in 1435 by a Jewish traveler, Elijah of Ferrara, to his family tells of meeting an Ethiopian Jew. He recounts that they do not celebrate Hannukah, did not know the Talmud, and followed the Oral Torah, passed down through the generations orally.

The history of the Beta Israel had many twists and turns, and we will look at more tomorrow.

Ethiopia's Religions, Part 1

Ethiopia was a fiercely Christian country in the Middle Ages, long before European colonization brought Christianity to Africa. To be fair, Medieval Ethiopia was home to all three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Before Ethiopia, it was the Kingdom of Aksum, in which Semitic polytheism was practiced, reaching the area from South Arabia.

Christianity is said to have begun with Frumentius and his brother Edesius. They were children who accompanied their uncle Meropius on a voyage that stopped at a port on the Red Sea, whereupon the entire crew was slaughtered except for the two young boys, who were taken to Aksum as slaves of the king.

The boys served the king faithfully, gaining position and privilege. The king gave them their freedom just before his death, but his queen asked them to stay at court and help raise the king's young son, Ezana. Frumentius taught Ezana about Christianity, and the two boys encouraged local Christian traders to practice Christianity openly so that people could learn about it.

When Ezana reached his majority, the brothers left for Tyre (their birthplace). Edesius became a priest. Frumentius stopped at Alexandria and asked the patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasius, to send missionaries to Ethiopia. Athanasius believed that Frumentius was the best person for the job, made him a bishop, and sent him back where he established his episcopal see, the first diocese in Ethiopia. This was between 328 and 346CE.

Bishop Frumentius converted King Ezana, with whose help many churches were built.

There was an early controversy when Byzantine Emperor Constantius II asked King Ezana to replace Bishop Frumentius with Theophilos Indus. Theophilos, however, was a proponent of Arian Christianity (to which Constantius was friendly). Most Christians considered Arianism heresy, so the request was turned down.

Frumentius gets credit for translating the New Testament into the local Ge'ez language, and for turning the Ge'ez alphabet from a consonant-only (abjad) version to a syllabic (abugida) version.

Next time we'll look at the almost-equally as old establishing of Islam and Judaism in Ethiopia.