ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Maimonides’ historicism, structural-functionalism, and philosophy of law redound upon his conception of authority as being grounded in consent. It discusses how Maimonides’ reconstruction of the events surrounding divine revelation on Sinai issue forth in a distinctive conception of the relationship between authority and consent that is a harbinger of modern liberalism. The chapter describes the relationship between Sinaitic revelation and the Exodus story in ways that more fully highlight the liberal, contractarian political import of the latter. It seeks to theorize the relationship between the Jethro story and Sinaitic revelation in a Maimonidean vein that effects some variations on his central theme of negative theology. The chapter discusses from a Maimonidean perspective how one theologically distinguishes between the sin of the golden calf and the building of the mishkan. There is a remarkable midrashic formulation that encapsulates how skeptical idealism might be envisioned as the key to the theological system propounded by Judaism.
