ABSTRACT
Moses ben Maimon, called Maimonides, was a medieval Jewish scholar who contributed to the integration of Jewish beliefs with traditional philosophy. Before arriving in Egypt, Maimonides was exposed to the thriving intellectual climate of Andalusia in Muslim Spain. The core purpose of Maimonides’s The Guide of the Perplexed was to explain difficult biblical terms for general readers. The urgency Maimonides felt to establish God’s incorporeality was caused by his desire to destroy any possible path that would lead to idolatry, which is the gravest sin and the greatest threat to life of a faithful Jew. As Maimonides himself struggles with unresolved and traditional questions about science, faith, and the end goal of humankind, he invites any reader—past or present—to wrestle with these questions as well.
