ABSTRACT
According to the Hebrew Bible, God is the all-good ruler of the universe. By defining evil as a privation of good, Augustine, like ibn Daud and Maimonides, was anxious to demonstrate how apparent evil could exist in a universe created by a wholly good and omnipotent God. Since evil does not in fact exist, it is incorrect to assume that God is responsible for its occurrence. For Augustine, evil is nothing but the corruption of natural measure, form or order. For the kabbalists, the existence of evil constituted a central problem for the Jewish faith. According to the Zohar, evil is like the bark of a tree of emanation; it is the husk or shell in which the lower dimensions of existing things are encased. In modern times philosophical theories about the existence of evil have ceased to attract attention within the Jewish community.
