Crescas: Light of the Lord (Or Hashem)

Crescas: Light of the Lord (Or Hashem)
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2018-11-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191037893

This volume is the first complete English translation of Hasdai Crescas's Light of the Lord. Light of the Lord is widely acknowledged as a seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy and second in importance only to Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. Crescas takes on not only Maimonides but, through him, Aristotle, and challenges views of physics and metaphysics that had become entrenched in medieval thought. Once the Aristotelian underpinnings of medieval thought are dislodged, Crescas introduces alternative physical views and reinstates the classical Jewish God as a God of love and benefaction rather than a self-intellecting intellect. The end for humankind then is to become attached in love to the God of love through devoted service.

Crescas' Critique of Aristotle

Crescas' Critique of Aristotle
Author: Harry Austryn Wolfson
Publisher: Harvard Semitic Series, 6
Total Pages: 904
Release: 1957
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

No detailed description available for "Crescas' Critique of Aristotle".

The Philosophy of Don Hasdai Crescas

The Philosophy of Don Hasdai Crescas
Author: Meyer Waxman
Publisher: Columbia University Oriental Studies
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1920
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Looks at the philosophies of Hasdai Crescas during the 1300's who swam against the current of the words of his contemporaries. He opposed the speculative reasoning of Aristotle and dared to criticize the introduction of Aristotelian views into the religious philosophy of his own people.

The Refutation of the Christian Principles

The Refutation of the Christian Principles
Author: Hasdai Crescas
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438400063

During the fourteenth century, there was a general demoralization in the Jewish community in Spain. Many Jews were on the brink of conversion. Rabbi Crescas met the Christian challenge by writing this pithy book refuting the principles of the Christian religion. He argued that the basic Christian doctrines, namely, original sin, salvation, trinity, incarnation, virgin birth, transubstantiation, baptism, the messiah, a new covenant, and demons, contradict human reason, thereby calling into question Christianity's claim to be a true religion. The Refutation is an important document of the medieval Jewish-Christian debate and is also especially important for the history of Jewish philosophy in general.

Prophecy

Prophecy
Author: Howard Kreisel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 681
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401008205

More than any other topic, prophecy represents the point at which the Divine meets the human, the Absolute meets the relative. How can a human being attain the Word of God? In what manner does God, when conceived as eternal and transcendent, address corporeal, transitory creatures? What happens to God's divine Truth when it is beheld by minds limited in their power to apprehend, and influenced by the intellectual currents of their time and place? How were these issues viewed by the great Jewish philosophers of the past, who took the divine communication and all it entails seriously, while at the same time desired to understand it as much as humanly possible in the course of dealing with a myriad of other issues that occupied their attention? This book offers an in-depth study of prophecy in the thought of seven of the leading medieval Jewish philosophers: R. Saadiah Gaon, R. Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Gersonides, R. Hasdai Crescas, R. Joseph Albo and Baruch Spinoza. It attempts to capture the `original voice' of these thinkers by looking at the intellectual milieus in which they developed their philosophies, and by carefully analyzing their views in their textual contexts. It also deals with the relation between the earlier approaches and the later ones. Overall, this book presents a significant model for narrating the history of an idea.

Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures

Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures
Author: Ehud Krinis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-10-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110702320

In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe. This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four parts. The first highlights his academic career and scholarly achievements. In the three other parts, colleagues and students of Daniel J. Lasker offer their own findings and insights in topics strongly connected to his studies, namely, intersections of Jewish theology and Biblical exegesis with the Islamic and Christian cultures, as well as Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, this wide-scoped and rich volume offers significant contributions to a variety of topics in Jewish Studies.

Time Matters

Time Matters
Author: T.M. Rudavsky
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791493253

Despite the importance of time and cosmology to Western thought, surprisingly little attention has been paid to these issues in histories of Jewish philosophy. Focusing on how medieval philosophers constructed a philosophical theology that was sensitive to religious constraints and yet also incorporated compelling elements of science and philosophy, T. M. Rudavsky traces the development of the concepts of time, cosmology, and creation in the writings of Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Gersonides, Crescas, Spinoza, and others.

Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy
Author: Steven M. Nadler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-12-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107037867

The first of its kind, this essay collection offers an extensive examination of Spinoza's relationship to medieval Jewish philosophy.

Gersonides' Afterlife

Gersonides' Afterlife
Author: Ofer Elior
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 691
Release: 2020-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004425284

Gersonides’ Afterlife is the first full-scale treatment of the reception of one of the greatest scientific minds of medieval Judaism: Gersonides (1288–1344). An outstanding representative of the Hebrew Jewish culture that then flourished in southern France, Gersonides wrote on mathematics, logic, astronomy, astrology, physical science, metaphysics and theology, and commented on almost the entire bible. His strong-minded attempt to integrate these different areas of study into a unitary system of thought was deeply rooted in the Aristotelian tradition and yet innovative in many respects, and thus elicited diverse and often impassionate reactions. For the first time, the twenty-one papers collected here describe Gersonides’ impact in all fields of his activity and the reactions from his contemporaries up to present-day religious Zionism.