The Jewish advance., November 08, 1878, Page 2, Image 2

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sk) Geichichtc der Attrivutcnlehre in der jüdifchen Reli
qsonsphilos·ophie des Mittelalcers von Saade bis
MaimuniT von Dr. David Kaufman, (Gotha:
VerthesJ \n\n [From the London Academy.']
The Divine Attributes As Ex
pounded by Mediaeval Jew
ish Theologians.*
By his lucid and scholarly work on
the Divine Attributes as Expounded by
Jewish Theologians in the Middle Ages,
Dr. Kaufman has opened up the way to
a recondite and neglected field of re
search, and filled in a defective page in
the general history of human thought.
The writer protests against the precon
ception that the literature of which he
treats, is either an isolated phenomenon
on the one hand, or a servile plagiarism
from the Arabic, itself borrowed, on the
other; and he doubts not but that the
evidence which he has adduced, will suf
fice to prove to any unbiased mind the
independence and the progressiveness of
the mediaeval Jewish philosophy. The
period of which he treats, viz., from the
tenth to the twelfth centuries, was the
age of Saadja Geron, Salomon Ibn Gabi
rol, and Jehuda Halewi, of Joseph Ibn
Zaddik, Abraham Ibn Daud and Mai
monides. The text contains a clear and
appreciative exposition of the works of
these writers which treat expressly of
the matter in hand, while the notes are
stored with an abundance of critical
observations which are rendered indis
pensable by the fact that the philosoph
ical writings of the authors in question,
with the notable exception of Maimon
ides, have had but scant justice done to
them by former scholars.
The work commences with the system
oi Saadja, the author of Emunoth ve
Deoth, who deals at the outset with the
proofs of the existence of the Creator,
who is at the same time knowable and
incapable of being represented by com
parisons with created things, as the
Scripture itself teaches; whehee it fol
lows that the attributes which imply
such comparisons can only be treated as
figures of speech, or at best as approxi
mations to the truth. Men should,
therefore, be solicitous about the mean
ing which underlies the expressions em
ployed, rather than about the terms in
which it is conveyed, and should abstain
from accumulating attributes in an irra
tional way, ascribing, e. g., to the Deity
as Omnipotent the power to do whatso
e\ er an unbridled fancy can imagine,
since nothing that is contrary to reason
can be predicated of God.
From Saadja we pass to Salomon Tbn
GrabiroJ, the composer of the
and from him to Jehuda
tialewi, who was distinguished for the |
boklness with which he repudiated the
obligation to harmonize religion with
philosophy, and challenged the right of
speculation to sit in judgment on the
taith. His famous work, the Kusari,
contains a general account of the Jew
ish religion, together with a refutation of
the systemt of the philosophers, and
arguments against the Christian and the
Mahomedan religions, in the form of
dialogues between the king of the Kha
zars and a philosopher, a Christian, a
- lahomedan and a Jew, respectively.
The poet with his lively imagination, chose
as the occasion of the conversation, the fact
of the conversion of the king of the Khazars
who inhabited the Crimea, and of a portion of
his people, which took place according to the
rabian historians, in tig' second half of the
eighth century.”
The “divine ” Aristotle, as Averroes
and others deemed him worthy to be
called, was boldly pronounced by R. Je
kudajo have gone astray. The exist
ence of God, which his predecessors had
laboriously strived to prove, was to him
axiomatic; the truths of religion were
facts verifiable by the higher conscious
ness, and not ascertainable by the reas
onings of the philosophers, of whom no
two could ever be found at unison upon
a fundamental principle, except when
they agreed to bow to the authority of a
third. To the same effect writes. Gaz
zali in his Tahfot al-falasifa, in which
he rates the philosophers for imposing
upon their weak brethren, by claiming
for their vague metaphysic, the certainty
and precision of the exact sciences. In
his doctrine of the attributes, R. Je
liuda cautions his readers against sup
posing that terms which are used of the
creatures can be transformed without
change of connotation to the Creator.
In the natural acceptation of the term,
we can not say that God is living, which
would imply the existence in Him of
emotions which can only reside in a
corporeal subject. Strictly speaking,
we should say that He is not living, but
we avoid the epithet, since it would be
liable to be misinterpreted as meaning
dead, whereas, in truth, the negation of
one attribute is not equivalent to the
affirmation of its opposite.
Because a stone, for example, is not
wise, it does not follow that it is foolish.
The stone is too low in the scale of
being to serve as the vehicle for such
concepions. and contrariwise the Deity
is so exalted, that neither life nor death
in the human sense, can be predicated of
him.
The same writer goes at length into
the discussion of the Divine names (pp.
155, etc.), and Ibn Ezra may have bor
rowed from him his interpretation of
Ex. iii. 13, 14, where the first
taken to be the Divine Name, in answer
to the question of Moses, and the words
following its interpretation,
“because I am.”
A section is devoted to the theology
of Joseph Ibn Zaddik, who has suffered
from misrepresentations (p. 336), owing
to a mistranslation or a corruption of the
text
of a letter
written to lbn libbon by Maimonides, in
consequence of which lbn Zaddik in his
Microcosmos, is said to have followed
the method of the anthropo-morphists;
the fact being that he is as far from
doing this as Maimonides himself, with
whom he shows a singular agreement
(p. 331) in his refined doctrine of the
negative attributes. To avoid miscon
ceptions, writes lbn Zaddik, with refer
ence to The Philosopher, it is best that
we should confine ourselves to negations
in speaking of God; saying, for example
that He is not unwise, rather than in
the positive form, that He is wise (p
331).
The same doctrine is very fully set
forth by Maimonides, who holds that the
fact of His necessary existence is all
that can be positively known about
God. The Divine nature cannot be ex
pressed in terms of human qualities.
The positive attributes are tolerated in
the present as a concession to human
weakness, and as necessary evils; but it
is only by negations, the multiplication
! of which is regarded as a positive acces
sion of knowledge, that the truth can be
rightly expressed. The works of Maim
onides made an epoch in the develop
ment of Judaism. In his own times, as
he testifies in a letter upon the Resur
rection, gross anthropo-morphic concep
tions prevailed even among the learned
(p. 485); and it was not to be expected
that his subtle, and as it was thought,
nihilistic theology would pass unchal
lenged, especially as he was not content
that his doctrines should be confined to
the more intellectual class, but demanded
that they should be published to the
multitude.
A storm of opposition accordingly
arose. In Paris and Montpellier, his
philosophical writings were condemned
to the flames; and as a natural conse
quence, he was rewarded with a sudden
notoriety. His works were translated
from the Arabic into Hebrew, and com
mented upon, and his fame was rapidly
extended far and wide.
A century after his death, the antropo
morphic tendency is said to have been
eradicated from .the Jewish mind, and
the whole credit of the reform is ascribed
to our author, Moses ben Maimun, whose
commanding influence upon the collect
ive Jewish community is expressed by
the popular saying, which makes him
second only to the son of Ainram
(J. Taylor.
Tlie Euphrates Valley Railway.
A very interesting letter from Smyrna
appears in the current number of the
Univers Israelite, from which we learn
that preparations for the construction of
the Euphrates Valley Railway are being
rapidly completed in the Holy Land.
Mesopotamia is full of English engineers
and agents who are traveling all over
the country, the former making all the
necessary studies and the latter pur
chasing lands. It appears that the line
will cross the Euphrates close to Ricca,
which is not far from Aleppo; will then
run on the left bank of the great river
towards Anbar, whence it will travel
direct to Bagdad on the Tigris. The
small town of Hille on the Euphrates,
in the neighborhood of which are the
ruins of Babylon, or as the Holy Script
ures calls it Babel, will become, in con
sequence of its industry and commerce,
one of the principal stations on this
route; the more so as the ruins in the
vicinity attract a large number of trav
elers from all parts of the world. The
residence of Nebuchadnezzar—the great
city which he had built—will, therefore,
soon see the puffing locomotive gliding
swiftly past its crumbling ramparts; and
on the rivers of Babylon where the des
cendants of the patriarchs sat and wept
over the lost glories of Zion, their chil
dren will appear as shareholders in the
new railway line, and as travelers for
their pleasure. Halting at Hille, they
will in the course of a few hours be able
to view the grandiose ruins of the palace,
where twenty-five centuries ago the Ba
bylonian generals elaborated the scheme
for the conquest of Jerusalem. But
besides these relics of the misty past,
there are also others in this district
which will not excite less interest and
curiosity. Travelers will be able to
see the complete and well preserved
foundation of the ancient tower of Ba
bel, which is 2,210 metres in circumfer
ence, but which is now only the home of
lions and jackals. In addition to this,
there are still some remains of the sus
pended gardens of Semiramides, the
ruins of the temple of Belus; and a
number of other religious edifices which
in ages long gone by were dedicated to
the worship of Baal, Astarte and analo
gous deities. When the Euphrates Val
ley Railway is completed, tourists will
be enabled to devote a month’s holiday
very agreeably to visiting these relics of
antiquity. The journey will be easily
made in twelve days. From London to
Vienna and thence to Salonica by rail
would occupy five days; five more days
would be employed in traveling by sea
to Alexandretta, and then in two days
the new failway will enable the archaeo
logical tourist to feast his eyes on the
ruins of Babylon, and view the interest
ing remains of a period which to Jews
cannot but be highly interesting.—J. }V.
Morocco.—There is some consolation
in the thought that amid the wreck and
devastion caused by calamities, human
sympathy is certain to be evoked on be
half of the sufferers; and while we
mourn over the affliction produced, we
feel gratified that so many should be
willing to make sacrifices of self in order
to assist in lessening the misery of their
fellow creatures. These reflections have
been awakened within us, in consequence
of intelligence having been received from
the famine-stricken town of Mogadoiv
where Mr. Judah L. Yuliy, jr., has been
foremost in establishing a fund for the
relief, in kind, of some 300 children.
These little ones have been daily fed for
the last three months almost altogether
at the expense of their benefactor, with
a meal of rice, meat and bread. Not the
least pleasing feature of this children’s
soup kitchen is that there is no distinc
tion of race or creed, and that Moorish
as well as Jewish orphans are welcomed
into this charity. We understand that
several benevolent ladies and gentle
men hearing of the labors of Mr. 1 uly
have, unsolicited, given him donations
towards meeting the expenses of his
praiseworthy object, and carrying it on
for a period of another six months. We
are fully aware that our well-to-do
classes have lately had quite their share
of work in responding to the many ap
peals on behalf of the sufferers by recent
disasters, both at sea and on land.
There are, however, benevolent individ
uals who, we feel sure, would be happy
to contifibute to the furthering of this
charitable cause.
CHICAGO SKETCHES.
15Y BEN - ADAM.
Editor Jewish Advance: i
Being a careful reader of your valu
able journal from the very beginning,
and finding it continually improving in
tenor and tendency, I am convinced that
you deserve all the attention and sup
port that our Chicago Israelites and the
Jehudim at large can possibly afford to
extend to you. I, for my part, offer you
my humble services. I am willing, if
agreeable to you, to prove my apprecia
tion of your excellent paper, by inform
ing your general readers, from time to
time, of incidents and facts of Jewish
life in our great city coming under my
observation.
The fame of our Garden city, situated
on the shore of the beautiful Lake
Michigan, is propagated far and wide:
for indeed, it has performed miracles.
In a comparatively short time, it has
developed from an insignificant and ob
scure village into a metropolis of a very
prominent commercial centre, command
ing with its wide spread nets of railroad
lines the mercantile traffic of the entire
West. The metamorphose is perfectly
wonderful. Where but a few decades
ago the wild winds enjoyed full liberty,
sweeping unchecked over the vast prai
ries, magnificent palaces, large stores and
magazines filled with the dazzling luxu
ries of India, and the precious products
of domestic and foreign markets abound
in great numbers. These facts have
often been published in the secular
press and admired by the world. Every
denomination having an official journal
of its own, has endeavored to lay the
full facts of its existence—the signs of
its progress before the public, which
must prove of great help to the future
historians of our age. But pever to my
knowledge, was there an attempt made
in any of the Jewish journals published
in this country, to give some outlines of
the history of our Jewish population, or
a full description of our congregations
and benevolent institutions. For a num
ber of years, I read most of the Jewish
periodicals of this country, and in all
these years I frequently have met cor
respondents from large cities and small
towns from all over this wide land, but
Chicago sems to be entirely ignored or
forgotten. If, once or twice in a number
of years, a letter dated from Chicago