ZHAO Tong-sheng. On Maimonides’Allegorical Interpretation of Torah in the Guide of the Perplexed. [J]. Journal of University of Jinan(Social Science Edition) (5):75-78(2008)
ZHAO Tong-sheng. On Maimonides’Allegorical Interpretation of Torah in the Guide of the Perplexed. [J]. Journal of University of Jinan(Social Science Edition) (5):75-78(2008)DOI:
On Maimonides’Allegorical Interpretation of Torah in the Guide of the Perplexed
Committed to the historical challenge of Aristotelianism philosophy from Greece via the Islamic philosophy to Judaism in the Middle Ages
Maimonides chose the strategy of integrating the religious tradition and the philosophy of rationalism.In doing so
he first dealt with the problem of the language of religion.He devoted most chapters of the First Part of his masterpiece The Guide of the Perplexed to explaining the words and sentences in Torah and other rabbinic literatures that in a traditional sense indicate the corporeality and plurality of God.Through the traditional method of allegorical interpretation
Maimonides tactfully rendered those words or texts in a way that the traditional Judaic literatures are consistent with the rationalist philosophy.Hence he began the troublesome journey of justifying the legitimacy of Judaism from the perspective of philosophy in the rest chapters of the Guide.