Ali Ataie – Judaism in a Nutshell The Basics of World Religions (Part 4)
AI: Summary ©
The concept of the religion of Judaism is discussed, using Shema as a way to explain Christian faith. The speakers discuss the importance of Christian faith and the misunderstandings of the term "tological" and the misunderstandings of the wordn't." They also discuss the use of "any other thing" in the context of the Kippah and the importance of the Shem Ha'am, which is the essence of god's essence. The speakers emphasize negative language expression in scripture and the importance of the third principle of the Bible, which is the concept of theological-istic theology. They also discuss the use of " IdENTisical" in the Bible and the importance of negative language expression in scripture. The speakers provide examples and emphasize the importance of seeing the back of god, the Shekhvin, and the trinity.
AI: Summary ©
So, tonight we're going to finish our section
on the religion of Judaism,
Insha'Allah.
So last time we ended,
by looking at the first and second
principles
of Jewish faith as articulated by Maimonides
in his Mishnah Torah.
So just to recap very quickly,
he said the first one is that god
alone is the creator and the direct doer
of all things.
He's a primary cause and efficient cause,
of all things.
And then number 2,
he said that god is unique,
and radically one, and immutable.
Right.
So just by way of commentary, we talked
about the Shema
is,
something equivalent
in some respects to our.
Deuteronomy 64, we mentioned that last time. Hear,
O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord
is 1. The great
the Shema
with Kavanah.
Kavanah is a very important concept,
in Judaism.
It means something like focus
or humility,
or devotion,
kind of similar to what we would say
is or.
It's very difficult to translate.
Rabbi Akiva
according to the Gemara.
Remember, Gemara now is the rabbinical commentaries on
the Mishnah, the oral law or the second
half
of the Talmud.
Rabbi Akiva, he, is famous
for reciting the Shema at his death. He
was actually killed,
by the Romans during the,
failed Bar Kokhba revolt,
in 135 of the common era. He actually
endorsed
this man, Simon Bar Kokhba, as being the
true Jewish messiah.
And Bar Kokhba actually was able
to defeat the Roman
legions
at Fort Antonia
in Jerusalem. He was actually able to seize
the temple at some point, but he was
killed thereafter in battle.
But according to the Gemara,
Akiva,
his final words were the Shema.
According to,
many eyewitnesses,
many of the Jews that were going to
the gas chambers during the holocaust,
they were heard reciting
the Shema, again that's Deuteronomy
64.
So the emunah of El Akhad,
the the faith
or the belief in one god,
this is,
according to Jews, the Jewish contribution,
to the world.
Right?
That they
brought the light of tohid
to all the nations, to the goyim.
So we would have
issues, a very problematic statement.
We would say, for example, that
I mean,
the term Judaism as we said, it's it's
anachronistic
to use at the time of Abraham or
Noah.
There was no such thing as Judaism at
the time of of Ibrahim alaihis salam.
The term Judaism,
the eponym of Judaism is Judah, who's or
Yehuda,
who's one of the, the older sons of
Jacob.
And of course Jacob is the grandson of
Ibrahim of Abraham.
So in the Quran makes this clear,
that Abraham was not a Jew.
It doesn't make sense to call him a
Jew. It's anachronistic.
It's kind of like saying,
George Washington was a fan of the Washington
Nationals.
Right? There was no such thing as Major
League Baseball at the time. It's anachronistic.
It's a bit ridiculous to say that.
Right. So we would say that all of
these prophets, Abraham, Noah, Adam, all of them
were Muslim.
They were submitters,
unto god. But this is Jewish theology, so
the Jews believe
that monotheism,
monotheism,
monotheism,
is the Jewish contribution into the world, and
that the Jews were chosen to bring
the light
of the one god to the world. So
this is the essence.
This is the definition of their chosenness.
Right. We hear this phrase, the chosen people.
Why are they chosen?
They're chosen to bring tokid to the nations,
to the world. Right? This is the nature
of their chosenness. So it's really seen now
as,
a burden
and something that,
that is
a major responsibility.
That's how they actually,
look at it.
Right?
The poet said how odd of god
to choose the Jews. Right? Just
two lines of
poetry. Quick poetry.
And this is mentioned in the Quran.
Right, where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks in
the first person, and I chose
you is the context,
and I chose you
above all of the nations.
Right? Why were they chosen? What's the nature
of this chosenness? They were chosen to bring
the light of monotheism,
to the nations. But certainly monotheism
existed in our conception of sacred history
way before Bani Israel,
way before Musa alaihi sallam, even before Abraham
or Ibrahim, alayhis salam.
So the rabbis go on to say,
that
that,
physicality
has nothing to do with god. Physicality implies
limitation.
So
god is not physical. He's not corporeal.
Right? So there may be one US president,
but he is not unique.
Right? There's
one Waheed US president,
but he's not
He's not unique. So he's flesh and blood
and all like all other mammals,
he is in space time. So again, getting
to this,
this,
differentiation
between or distinction between and
And again, many of our theologians say that
they're absolutely synonymous,
but others would say, no, god is, for
example, wahid in his sifat, his attributes, but
ahad in his essence.
We mentioned last time,
probably the Hebrew equivalent to is
which is a term that's used by Maimonides.
It's from the same exact root, and it
could it can denote this type of eternal
oneness with god, that he's one person,
meaning one consciousness,
that there's no multiplicity in the so called
godhead, a simple unity. And of course by
simple, we don't mean unintelligent,
we mean indivisible,
radically 1.
Right? Whereas,
which the the equivalent is in Deuteronomy 64
in the Shema, echad,
again, the same exact word,
from the same root, denotes
his external oneness, that he that his utter
uniqueness.
Right? That nothing in creation resembles him whatsoever.
Right? Utter dissimilarity
to creation.
Now the rabbis go on to say that
it is permissible for Jews to pray in
a mosque
as long as they face
Alakuts,
Yerushalayim,
Jerusalem.
It is not considered idolatry because Muslims worship.
Muslims worship the one true god.
Right?
So for the most part, our theology is
correct. They have issues with our prophetology.
Right,
and our aqidah,
with respect to,
sacred texts, and we'll talk about that.
But our theology really,
I would say that the differences are
are are minor.
However, they mentioned that the shilush,
that's the Hebrew term shilush.
Arabic is a
what is the Arabic term?
Tathleeth,
Tathleeth. Right? Tathleeth,
Trinity,
Shilush, the Trinity, is considered idolatry
according to
almost all the consensus of
at least the classical,
Jewish authorities.
They call this Avudah Zara, Avudah Zara. Avudah
is ibadah. Zara means false.
Right? So false worship or
idolatry. Because the trinity and we'll talk about
the trinity next week and the week after
that. The trinity involves what's known as hypostatic
multiplicity,
this idea that there are multiple persons of
god,
that there are 3 separate and distinct persons
of god, and that all 3 are co
eternal and cosastantial,
coequal.
This is highly problematic
for Maimonides. So he doesn't consider this to
be,
correct theology
by any means.
So all of the major rabbis, they say
that belief in the tethlith or the shilush
is avodazarah,
is is shirk.
The rabbis are famous for saying tachat Ishmael
tachat Ishmael velot tachat edom.
We would rather live under,
Ishmael, meaning the Arabs or Muslims,
rather than under Edom or Rome or the
Christians.
If you look throughout Jewish history, the Jews
really flourished under Muslim caliphates,
especially when we look at Muslim Spain, Muslim
North Africa.
Jewish systematic theology was born
in Muslim Spain.
Right?
Maimonides,
Joseph Albo, Judah Halevi,
Saadia Gaion. These are the great Jewish,
thinkers and philosophers, systematic theologians.
Most of them actually wrote in Arabic. That
was their primary language. Maimonides wrote the,
the,
the guide for the perplexed, the
he wrote it actually in Arabic. It was
translated later into Hebrew. But if you look
at Jewish communities living in Christendom or Christian
Europe, it was very precarious.
And oftentimes,
there were pogroms set against them, that sort
of state sponsored terrorism or persecution.
They were exiled several times, twice from England,
twice from France.
A couple times I think also from Austria.
The plague was blamed on them
because
Jewish communities that were more, that were actually
living in their own cloistered communities at the
time. They did not mix
with the Goyim,
until,
much, much later. We're talking maybe,
you know, 17th, 18th centuries.
17th or 18th century when they actually started
to intermix and live among the gentiles.
But in the middle ages, you have the
Christians dying, you know, something like 40%
of of Christendom was decimated by the black
plague, the bubonic plague. But the Jewish community
is relatively unaffected, so of course they were
scapegoated. This is because of you. You're killers
of Christ. This type of thing. You've cursed
us.
And the reason why the Jews weren't dying
from the plague is because there's a seder,
there's a chapter
in the Mishnah,
which is called Tohorot,
which
is Babo Toharah.
Right? So the Jews had these ideas of
cleanliness, of hosul, of wudu, of najasa,
right? And that's where the disease, you know,
from fleas and from rats and things like
that.
So there's that famous statement, we'd rather live
under Ishmael, Ishmael, alayhis salam. Arabs are usually
the Muslims are referred to in rabbinical literature
as, Ishmael Ishmaelites.
Maimonides refers to the prophet as that Ishmaelite,
for example,
in the Mishnah Torah.
The rabbis say something interesting. They say Christianity
is like a pig.
The pig appears to be kosher. So what
is kosher According to you know, we say
kosher or cash root.
What is what is halal for a Jew
to eat? At least for the orthodox and
conservative.
Animals that have a cloven hoof
and chew the cud.
Right? So, like, an animal that can eat
food, it's called a ruminant. It can bring
it back up and chew it later like
a cow
or a goat.
A sheep can do that. A giraffe can
do that. Giraffe is actually kosher.
But
camels don't. Camel is not kosher.
So they're saying Christianity is like a pig.
You know, the pig has a split hoof,
but it does not chew the cud. So
in other words, they're saying Christianity looks great.
It sounds great on the outside.
Right? It looks good on the outside, but
it's deceptive.
Right? So Christianity,
you know, if you if you talk to
Christians,
there's a strong emphasis on relationship and love
of god,
which is great. You know? We believe in
those things as well.
But when the Sharia is,
is not emphasized and there's nothing to ground
you,
then you start saying deviant things. Right? So
there's that famous statement of Imam Malik ibn
Anas,
the Imam of Medina,
who said that whoever studies,
tasawwuf
when he used that term, right, we say
Sufism, I don't necessarily like that,
Or tasawuf al ihsan,
almosuluk.
Right? Almatazkiyah,
it has different asma,
according to the
for the science of of tesawaf.
He said whoever studies
tesawaf but did not engage in fiqh in
sharia,
right, that he will be he will become
a zindiq,
that he will become a heretic.
That's what the word zindiq means or an
unbeliever.
Right? So it's a very dangerous state. But
whoever studies fiqh sharia,
but did not study tasawuf,
fakat,
to fasaka,
he'll become a fasik, which is not as
bad
as a zindik.
Right? It's better to on the side of
the Sharia.
Right? And he says whoever
and whoever joins the 2,
will actualize,
the truth.
Right?
So
the rabbis also mentioned, for example, you shouldn't
walk next to a church.
Right? I mean, it's not an official mitzvah.
Right? The 613
mitzvot are in the Torah,
in the Talmud.
Really in the Torah, they're all there according
to Maimonides,
his,
his,
enumeration of the
613 commandments.
But this is a strong recommendation given by
the rabbis
that if you're walking down the street and
you see a church, you should cross the
street because it's good to keep a safe
distance from all from all idolatry. So it's
actually prohibited
for a Jew to walk into a church,
and the Orthodox would even say it's prohibited
to go for for an Orthodox rabbi or
an Orthodox Jew to go into a reform
synagogue
because there isn't a total
commitment to all of the mitzvot
in the reform in the reform synagogue, reform
temple.
Questions about the kippah. The kippah is the
small skull cap
that,
Jewish men tend to wear.
And, this is a mitzvah, it is a
commandment.
It's called a kippah in Hebrew, which means
to cover. It's called a Yarmuka
in Yiddish, which is a sort of,
kind of a dead language, but it was
spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe in the
second century.
The the purpose of it is to remind
the Jewish man that there's something above him
at all times. And Jewish women are also
supposed to wear a something to cover their
head,
something like a hijab. Sometimes,
I mean if you go to a,
an Orthodox community on the East Coast,
the cultural practice is that girls would get
married
and then they would shave their heads and
wear a wig. Right? So it's kind of
a,
so that the point is not to show
your real hair.
Okay.
So that's the second principle then.
God is unique and radically 1 and immutable.
Before we move on, a couple more things
I wanna say about that,
that's more focused on the theology rather than
the the practice.
We mentioned last week that Maimonides was a
negative theologian.
Right? He was a negative theologian.
And,
many of the great systematic theologians,
of Judaism, Joseph Albo and others, Bahia ibn
Upakuda, they they tended to be
negative theologians,
apophatic
theologians.
Right?
So they would engage
the theological
approach of negation.
And this is called the
in Arabic.
And it's generally considered to be a safer
way to theologize.
What does it mean to theologize?
Right. Theos means god.
Logos means
many things, word, or reason.
So to speak reasonably so to speak about
god. It's better to talk about in other
words, it's better to talk about
who or what god is not
rather than who or what
god is.
Right?
So even Hinduism has
a theological approach that is akin to negative
theology. It's called nirguna Brahminism,
and we'll talk about that inshallah when we
get to Hinduism. Adi Shankara calls it neti
neti theology.
He's sort of a champion
of of, what's called transpersonalism
or Nirguna Brahminism,
which means not this, not this. Nothing in
nothing that you see in the so called
creation,
is, and I said so called creation. We'll
talk about what that means in Judaism,
sorry, in Hinduism
because everything is ultimately an illusion
in Hinduism.
Nothing is actually God
that you see.
All right.
He is utterly transcendent.
So why theologize like this?
Again, to,
uphold
god's radical uniqueness.
Right? His
his
because god's nature is wholly other.
So if you look at the first two
commandments.
Right? So we talk about,
you know, the 10 commandments, famous movie made,
in the 19
I guess it was in the late fifties.
Charlton Heston is Moses.
The 10 Commandments, I think they made another
A couple more Moses movies after that. They
weren't very good.
And that movie's not very good. It's not
very accurate according to the bible anyway.
But everyone has heard of the 10 commandments.
But that's only 10 of them. Those are
the sort of the 10
main commandments. But as we said, Jews believe
that there are 613 commandments.
But let's look at the first two commandments.
So you'll find this in the book of
Exodus chapter 20,
right at the beginning of chapter 20. So
remember, Exodus,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,
the 5 books, the Pentateuch,
the Chumash.
Right?
The the the 5 scrolls of Moses. So
this is the second book.
Moses is on the mountain,
and god says to him
that I am the lord, thy god,
right, who brought you out of,
the house of bondage, out of Egypt, out
of Mitzrayim.
Then he says
You shall not have any other gods before
me.
Right. So this is the first commandment,
that the god that brought the Israelites out
of Egypt, he's the only god.
Right.
And when it says you shall have no
other gods, Elohim, that doesn't mean that there
are other gods.
Right. What that means is
that you shall have no other so called
gods. You shall not worship anything else other
than me, because
the god that is bringing you out of
Egypt is the only true god.
Right? So we find that term aliha in
the Quran also.
Like the people of Ibrahim alayhis salam, they
were devoted to their Aliyah, their gods. Those
aren't really gods. They're so called gods.
Alright. So that's the first commandment.
And then
he
says,
So now we're getting into the second commandment.
It's kind of a long one. He says,
God again speaking directly to Moses and by
extension, so laka, so this is the kafil
kitab, so speaking
2nd person masculine singular to Moses.
But
as we as Imam al Shafi'i says about
the Quran,
whenever Allah speaks to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam in the Quran directly,
it is also by extension to the ummah
unless it's very obvious that it's only speaking
to him.
Right? So in this case, the rabbis would
say to Moses and by extension, the Am
Israel or the Bani Israel, right, the the
children of Israel.
So he says, you shall not make unto
yourself the likeness of any image
which is in the heavens
above you.
Or the likeness or the image of anything
which is in the earth or on the
earth below you.
Or the likeness or the image of anything
that is in the water beneath the earth.
Right?
So that covers
everything.
That covers the universe. Everything above the earth,
on or in the earth, and below the
earth.
Right? There's nothing like God. Those are the
first two commandments of Exodus.
Right?
We talked about
numbers 23/19.
Remember we talked about that.
God is not a man that he should
lie. And we mentioned that rabbi Abahu of
Caesarea,
who died in 3/20 of
the common era, who who was actually a
a brilliant orator and a defender of of
Jewish faith in the face of the Christians.
He was a sort of an anti Christian
polemicist or apologist, Jewish apologist.
He said the meaning of that is
that whoever claims to be God is a
liar.
That's that's what the Hebrew actually means according
to Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea.
Right? We talked about Hosea 119,
indeed, I am god and not a man.
It's mutually exclusive
god and man.
Right?
Isaiah 558
is a very famous verse of transcendence.
All of Deutero Isaiah. So according to
historians of the Old Testament,
the book of Isaiah actually has 3 authors.
It was authored at,
3 different times.
So we have Proto Isaiah from chapter 1
to chapter 39,
and then chapters
40 to 66 is called Deutero Isaiah. And
it's really in Deutero Isaiah where you get,
a strong teaching of god's transcendence.
And then after that you have Trito Isaiah,
a third Isaiah until the end of the
book. But in Deutero Isaiah,
basically,
if you believe that god exists
literally within the 4 elements,
then you're a mushrik,
then you're an idolater.
God is transcendent. So
558 of Isaiah is right there. My thoughts
are not your thoughts, neither are my ways
your ways.
Right? Or Isaiah 40 chapter 20 sorry. Chapter
40, verse 25,
to whom will you liken me?
Right. It's a rhetorical question. Nothing is like
god. In fact the name Michael in Arabic,
sorry, the name Michael in Hebrew,
it's Hebrew in origin. It's also, you know,
Mikal or Mikayil, it's in the Koran,
the name of one of the archangels.
But its origin is Hebrew,
mikael.
Mi means man, hu
in Arabic,
and then ka is the calf,
kaafutashbih,
like we say, 'lesakah, mithlihi shei' one,
right?
So man, ka,
eil,
Allah,
or ila, who is like God? It's a
rhetorical question.
It doesn't mean a man's a man whose
name is Michael
is like
God. It doesn't mean that. It's his name
is a rhetorical question. Who is like God?
Right? Nobody is the answer, and it's already,
understood that you know the answer. That's the
point of our, istif ham taqrir. You already
know the answer to the question. It's really
just a reminder.
Right?
Okay.
So negative theology.
So according to Maimonides,
right,
when referring to god's
nature or essence.
Right? So according to Maimonides,
the name of god's
essence
is the tetragrammaton.
The four letter word
or the four letters
that you find all throughout the Hebrew bible.
Right? This, this sort of initials of God's
name.
Right?
Yod Vav
Vav. Yod Vav
Right? So you'll see that. In the Hebrew,
you'll see it. Usually in English, it's just
translated as Lord with a capital l, or
Lord, all letters
in caps,
but that's actually the four letter name of
god, or the initials of god. Now how
do you articulate
Yod Vav?
The articulation
is not known for sure.
Once a year on Yom Kippur, the day
of atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish
calendar,
the high priest of the temple who was
called the
Hagadol,
he would go into
the, Qadush Hashim, the holy of holies inside
the temple.
Right. The Beit,
what's called the Beit Mikdash,
Beit al Maqdis
in Jerusalem.
He would go into the innermost
chamber
on Yom Kippur
and he would pronounce the the holy name
of god, the actual
Ismul Avam of god.
Right? The initials of which are
YHWHYHWHYHWH.
So the high priest knew the name,
and,
he would,
make a,
a toba on behalf of all of Israel
by calling on god's most sacred name,
teshuvah or toba,
right, repentance.
And then he would pass
knowledge of the name to his successor, and
he would pass it to his successor, and
so on and so forth. But since the
temple is destroyed
in 70,
by the Romans, general Titus,
The priesthood is gone.
No more sacrifices.
Right? The name has become lost,
but according to Maimonides,
the Yod Vav the Tetragrammaton,
the Shem HaMaforash as it's called in Hebrew,
This is the name of god's essence.
Alright? And, generally,
the orthodox agree with him. The kabbalah,
a a text of Jewish mysticism,
it disagrees with this and says that the
actual name of god's essence is Ein Sof,
which means the one who is without limit,
the limitless.
That's the name of god's essence.
Other rabbis, they use the name,
mahut,
mahut.
So right in the middle of mahut you
have the huwa, the letters in Hebrew, and
vav,
or and wow in in, in Arabic. Also,
if you look at that tetragrammatin
again,
yod vav
right in the middle again, you have the
huwa.
Right? So these are the prominent letters
of the sacred
name of God. And oftentimes in the Hebrew
Bible, the tetragrammaton
is shortened by just who.
Right? For example, the name Elijah,
the name Elijah
in Hebrew is Eli yahu.
Eli means my God, yahu
is yahu,
right,
which is again a shortened,
way of of articulating
the Yod Hey Vav Hey. But how to
actually articulate all four letters is not
decisively known, of course. And it's actually
impermissible
and
a mortal sin for Jews to try to
articulate,
that
tetragrammaton.
The Christians, of course, they don't have these
religious scruples.
So you'll find, for example, Jehovah Witnesses.
Their their claim to fame is that the
is
pronounced Jehovah.
Right? So they'll come to your door and
they'll say, do you know the name of
God?
And, you know, they'll come to a Muslim
house, and and the Muslim will say, Allah,
and they say, no. That's not a name.
That's a title. And, of course, we say,
no. It's actually a name, and there's a
debate.
But they're trained that, no. Allah is a
title. It's from the god, and that's a
minority opinion.
Anyhow,
so we can ask them, how do you
get Jehovah?
And they say, well, from the tetragrammaton,
Yod Hey Vav
Hey, Y H W H.
So we ask them then, okay, those are
4 consonants.
How do you know how to vowel it?
And
a 100%
of the time,
a 100% of the time
the Jehovah's Witness will have no answer for
you.
And then you say okay fine, that's how
you vowel it. So
Jehova.
So Jehova with a j? And they say
yes. But this is a yod in Hebrew.
How do you go from a yod to
a j? And again,
90
90 percent of the time,
they won't have an answer for you. So
it's it's conjecture. They really don't know.
Right? Others would say Yahweh.
Right? You hear that a lot too.
Yahweh. Right? It just seems to roll off
the tongue, so that might be what it
is.
My my opinion is it's probably.
Is
a it's a present tense verb
in perfect tense,
which means
he is.
Right?
It's a verb meaning he is and continues
to be.
Right? And then the shortened form of it,
who or huah,
is the 3rd person masculine
pronoun,
which again means
he is. But it's a pronoun this time.
It's not an actual verb.
Right? Ibn Arabi,
he says
as a possible name of the essence of
god.
So again, that huwa is in the middle.
Imam al Razi suggests that huwa is
There is no god
but Say, is
That's the ismul 'adam. There's
difference of opinion.
Nonetheless,
according to Maimonides,
when referring to god's essence or nature,
there are 3 main attributes
existing,
theologians would agree with that.
The
sort of the,
the core attribute
of God
is existence, and it's not an accident. The
attributes of accidents are different. God doesn't have
accidents. He has an essence of attributes.
Right? The attributes are necessary.
Accidents are
not necessary.
So it was an accident
that
I was born Iranian
and have a white beard now. That's an
accident.
If I was not born Iranian
and my beard was black,
I would still be me. It's not essential
to my nature.
That's an accident.
But the fact that
I have an intellect,
that is an attribute of me. If I
did not have intellect, then I wouldn't be
classified
as
the rational animal,
right, as the human being, the homo sapiens.
The homo sapiens means the rational
human being.
Right? So intellect is an attribute of the
human being, whereas skin color, eye color, so
on and so forth, all of these things
are accidents. They're only possible. They're not necessary.
It could have been different
if I had different color eyes. If I
had no eyes I still be a human
being. If I was blind I'd still be
a human being. Okay.
So
existence, unity, and eternity,
3 main attributes according to Maimonides.
And even these,
he says, we should understand them negatively.
So it's better to say,
god is not nonexistent.
It's better to put things negatively.
It's better to say that god that with
god, there is no plurality
or multiplicity,
associated with him whatsoever.
We talked about kethra and adad and so
on and so forth.
It's better to say that
god is not bound by time.
Right?
So so even these core attributes, as articulated
by my by Maimonides, are better to put
them negatively. However, he says, we may speak
of God
positively
so in other words, cataphatically, so we have
apophatic,
negatively,
kataphatic,
positively
for the note takers.
You you can make
cataphatic expressions,
positive expressions of god, but only in reference
to a divine action in scripture.
So for Maimonides, one
cannot speak positively about God in any way,
shape, or form unless one relates
relates it to an action that was done
in in scripture.
I'll give you an example. So if you
say, for example, god is good in any
language.
So in Hebrew, right, you would say
or
Right? So in English, God is good. So
God there is the subject, the mubtada.
Is is called the copulative verb,
the linking verb, and then good is the
predicate or the khabar, this is a kataphatic
expression.
Maimonides
would say that expression is shirk.
It is idolatry
to make that statement.
God is good, period.
Idolatry.
Because we did not relate it to an
action.
And also you can say Moshe Tov in
Hebrew, Moses,
shalom,
shalom alayb or alayhis salaam, peace be upon
him, Moses is good.
So good, the predicate good, the word good,
the the,
the noun good
can be predicated
of many things.
Right? So how can he possibly use the
same predicate for God and Moses?
Right? So for Maimonides,
that's a big problem to do from a
standpoint.
You're qualifying god with the same noun that
you're qualifying Moses. So you're saying using the
same noun. So that's problematic. So for maimonides
you would have to say something like, god
is good or he is all good because
he led the Jews out of Egypt and
defeated the pharaoh or something like that.
So you can make a kataphatic expression.
You can make a positive
statement about God as long as you
use it in sort of the superlative and
then relate it to something that god actually
did
in scripture.
So the divine names for Maimonides
are simply and strictly
descriptions of god's actions.
That's all they are. The divine names of
god in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew bible,
are simply and strictly descriptions
of god's actions.
So referring to god as king, like melech,
right,
while not referencing an action in scripture is
shirk,
is idolatry
according to Maimonides
because
king can be predicated
of many different human beings.
Right?
David Hammelech,
King David. Shlomo Hammelech,
King Solomon.
Right?
So it's
it's God's
action
that makes him unique,
not his names.
No one can do God's actions.
Solomon and David, not even Moses can bring
the,
has the power
intrinsically
to bring anyone out of Egypt and defeat
the pharaoh.
Moses didn't do that. Moses was the vehicle
through which God actually did it. Remember, God
is a doer of all actions. He's al
fa'il, the free agent, as Maimonides
articulated in this first principle.
Okay.
Maimonides says something interesting. He says, if you
praise a king who possesses
millions of gold pieces
for possessing millions of silver pieces,
then you're actually disparaging and insulting the king.
Even though your intention is to praise the
king. Look at this king.
He has so many millions of silver pieces
while he actually has gold pieces.
Your intention is to praise him but you're
actually insulting and disparaging him.
Aquinas said even the praise of god is
extremely remote
from his reality, and praising God actually requires
a repentance.
The praise of God. Forget about the cursing
of God, disbelief in God, so on and
so forth. The praising of God because you're
using language, and language is created. God is
uncreated.
Alright.
So positive attributes may not be assigned to
god unless these refer to god's actions in
scripture.
God is powerful because he did this. He
saved us from the pharaoh.
Right? So all divine names are derived
from god's actions in scripture according to Maimonides.
In other words, Jews cannot say that these
names
of god and this is Maimonides' opinion.
These names of god had no reality until
after the creation of the world
according to Maimonides.
So God is king like Melech and Shepherd,
Rori
and Selah. God is the rock,
you know.
The exception to that is the tetragrammaton,
the because Maimonides
that that actually refers to god's essence
and god's essence was was,
existent. It's a necessary existent, obviously, before
creation. But if you say before creation,
that god
was Melecha Olam,
he's,
the king of, Rabul 'alamin,
Malikul 'alamin, for example,
then that is too speculative
for Maimonides.
It's,
you know, it's true in principle, but Maimonides
just does not want to go there.
It's too conjectural,
because these names are describing god's actions.
That's what they're doing. So we cannot talk
about god's essence
by using these names before he actually the
action. Of course,
Imam Atahawi says something very interesting in his
creed.
He says that God can be his mawsufun,
bi jami'iswifatihi
minazaliyah,
that
that God Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is,
can be described
by
all of his attributes
from pre eternality
because
the capacity
to create is always with God, is always
with.
Right?
So,
so he says,
He merits,
he deserves
the name,
the creator even before creation. He merits the
name, rub, even before marbu. He merits the
name lord even before anything to lord
over any creation he means.
Because the divine,
omnipotence,
the potential,
the full potential and capacity
is there to create.
So I'm sitting right now at this this
is just an example to sort of maybe
bring our understandings
of
I'm sitting right now, but
you can still describe me as Al Qa'im,
the standard because I have an ability to
stand. Now that ability could be taken away
from me.
Right? Because Allah,
god, is in control of all things. He
could incapacitate
me. But the fact that I'm sitting now
doesn't mean that I can't stand, that you
can't describe me as a stander. You can
describe me as a stander because I have
that ability.
So with with god,
just because he did not create, he merits
the name Khalekh and nothing can incapacitate
him. So he makes a decision out of
his
absolute volition within his nature to create. Nothing
can stop his errata.
Right? He is intrinsically,
independent.
Right? So Maimonides would disagree with that and
say that's just too speculative.
Don't talk about God's essence
before creation. That's that's conjecture. Don't go there.
The names of God are describing his actions
and scriptures. Full stop.
Okay.
Now returning now. So that was now we
can go to the the third principle
where he begins by saying the same way,
I believe with
complete faith that the creator blessed be his
name.
He
says,
that he's not a body,
and there is
there is not for him
any likeness whatsoever.
Right?
He's not a a body. He's not matter
like a
but compounded
compounded body.
He's not composed of anything.
There's nothing like him whatsoever.
And what's interesting is that this statement was
actually a bit controversial,
in 12th century Judaism because many rabbis
tended to be literalists. They were
when it came to the, Tanakh.
Right? They were.
They were anthropomorphous.
So they actually denied
that the bible has the Hebrew bible had
a majaz
meaning. It didn't have a figurative meaning. Everything
was hakikri. Everything was literal.
This is very problematic.
Moses ben Taku, for example,
was one of the famous
anthropomorphous
rabbis. He died in 12/90,
a few decades after the death of Maimonides,
where he said the Tanakh is.
It's absolutely literal. Like in Psalm 18, it
says god has ears.
I say, yeah, he has ears.
And, you know, they're they're
their their physical ears,
and he has,
you know, it says smoke
exuded from the nostrils of god in the
Psalms.
Right? And he says, yeah, and that's exactly,
literally, what happened.
How does, how do,
how does Maimonides
deal with with with passages like this? Well,
the Tanakh,
has what we would call
and
and and these terms are Quranic.
Right?
Or verses.
So ayat,
waoharu
mutashabihat.
Right? So an ayam utashabiha
is a verse in the Quran that is
on the face very clearly understood, kind of
one dimensional.
Even in translation, very clearly understood.
Muhamkamat,
and, you know,
the name suggests that there's
there's it's a verse of legal import.
Right? Or or what we would say in
in Jews would say in Judaism,
it's halakhic. It relates to the halakah.
Right? There's a juristic
aspect to that.
And then you have Mutashabihat,
which are
obscure verses or polyvalent
verses that are not easily grasped.
They require some study. They require,
commentary.
They may be theological.
They may be anthropomorphic.
Right?
The yed of god is above their hands,
and yed is usually translated as hand. So
what does it mean? God has a hand?
God's hand is above their hand? What does
that mean? God has a physical hand? Hand.
Right? No. It doesn't mean that. So,
the best examples, the quintessential
example
of of an Ayam but a Shabbiha. Right?
Of a of a Pesuch, which is the
word for aya in Hebrew
that is anthropomorphic
in the Torah is Exodus 3323.
Right? The quintessential
anthropomorphic
verse. So this is when, this is when
Moses asks to see god's face.
He said, let me see your panim, your
face, and god says, you'll see my
you'll see my back.
So what does this mean? So Maimonides engages
in Tatwil,
Tatwil,
Esoteric
exegesis
of
the of the Torah's.
In other words, he interprets these verses in
light of god's transcendence.
Right? And this is the whole project of
the guide,
of his magnum opus,
Right? The the
guide for the perplexed.
What is he trying to do? He's trying
to bring together and
revelation and reason.
Right? And preserve Tanzi,
preserve
transcendence of god.
So
this is what he says. Now before we
get to Maimonides,
there was another
theologian
that preceded Maimonides. He died in 10th century.
His name was Saadia Gaion, and he was
probably the very first
Jewish systematic theologian.
Very, very famous.
Wrote in Arabic also.
His book is called beliefs and opinions.
Well,
I believe is the actual title, and then
it was later translated
as or
something like that. I don't remember exactly
the Hebrew title.
But Sadia Gaion,
he lived in Iraq. He also did an
incredible translation of the
Hebrew ever done.
So how does Sadia Gaion, how does he
deal with this? You know, you'll see you
you won't see my face, you'll see my
back. So he says seeing the back of
god means,
seeing,
it means
seeing a created light,
right, which which he calls the Shekinah,
which is related to the Arabic Sakina.
The Shekhinah represents God's presence on earth.
It's a symbol of God's presence. It doesn't
mean it's not God's presence literally.
It symbolizes God's presence or Tophiel.
Right? This created light
that Moses would see
when he would go into the Mishkan,
the Tabernacle of Meeting, the sort of portable
temple,
the prefigurement
of the actual temple in Jerusalem.
Right? Temple that Moses would go into in
the Sinai Peninsula,
and he would speak with God.
Sadia says, when God wanted to speak to
Moses,
he would create a light in front of
Moses, telling Moses,
getting his attention essentially.
Right? And this light is called the Shekhinah.
And this light was so brilliant that Moses
could not look at it.
He can only look at it when the
light was sort of leaving and he would
sort of see the tail end of it.
And Sadia says, that sort of tail end
of the light, that's the ahor Adonai, that's
the back of god. So he takes the
passage as total majaz.
It's it's, it's a figurative expression.
Seeing the back of God for Moses means
that he saw a created light that God
would manifest in the tabernacle of meaning. And
after some point, it actually says in Exodus
that Moses had to wear a veil over
his face
because the light was beginning to shine off
his own face, and it was a blinding
light, so he would wear a veil.
Right? So the shekhinah act as an intermediary
between god and human beings
during prophetic encounters.
Now Maimonides,
he agrees with sardia
with respect to the Shekhinah,
but he adds an interesting esoteric
dimension. By the way, the rabbi's quote from
the Talmud
that says,
the sages,
meaning the rabbinical sages, they teach that the
Torah speaks in the language of man.
Right? So this is why there's
in the Hebrew bible. This is why there's
anthropomorphic verses in the bible.
Right. Because it's trying to communicate
something true that you can understand, but it's
not literally true.
It's it's it's rhetoric. It's a very effective
form of rhetoric.
Right? And and god has to, in a
sense, condescend,
as it were,
to speak to us.
As one of my teachers said, like a
mother has to sort of condescend to speak
to her
her young child.
If a mother wants a toddler to
finish
his meal,
you can't sit down and reason with a
toddler you have to eat this because it's
nutritious and, you know, so on and so
on. You can't do that. You have to
sort
of make a game out of it, or
you have to sort of use different intonations
and things like that.
So
so in order for us to understand,
right,
theology and understand the will of God,
god has to use expressions that we can
relate to.
And that's that's the
the purpose of these anthropomorphic
verses, but they have to be
interpreted in the light of transcendence.
I'll be done in 5 minutes,
inshallah.
So then Maimonidesa, he adds an interesting esoteric
dimension.
So he says, yes, the back of the
sheikhina. That's true.
But what is the?
What is the face of?
What is the face of god?
Maimonides says the face of god refers to
an intense
clear knowledge
or a complete
apprehension
or
comprehension
of God.
So a comprehension
of god is impossible
for any human being.
No one really comp no one really comprehends
as Idraq
of Allah of Allah other
than God himself. So it's impossible.
You know, Moses is can I can I
comprehend you as you comprehend yourself?
Right? And, of course, from an Islamic standpoint,
that's a problematic request
according to many of the theologians. The prophet
would not ask for something that's impossible,
inconceivable,
considered bad adab. But this is the opinion
of Maimonides.
Whereas the back of god, the,
is a reference to the knowledge of god
which man can know.
So man's capacity
is to only know the quote back of
god, to have
marifa
of god.
Right? So in other words, Moses seeing the
back of god means that Moses had the
most marifa to Allah. The most
gnosis,
the most intimate knowledge of god that is
possible for a human being to have.
Right?
Yeah.
So none of the none of the rules
of
of physics apply to god,
certainly not Newtonian physics.
He transcends physicality completely,
getting into a little bit of the halakah,
Jewish law.
No iconography of God or even human beings
or even celestial bodies are allowed
in Orthodox halakah.
So even, like, painting pictures of planets
or human beings.
Animals are okay, it it seems, as long
as
there's something sort of left off, like an
eye is left off or there's some deformity
given.
Most rabbis are against,
photography.
Even with the dolls, you know, they cut
the nose off or something
or missing finger. No complete image is allowed.
So that's the halakah. So Hashem, the god.
Right?
God is not the 4 elements, fire, water,
earth, and wind.
So the rabbi say
you know, it says in the Psalms, god
is the outstretched arm.
Right? And the the word
is used, like arm
in the Hebrew,
And the meaning of this means that he's
the savior,
not that he's a physical arm.
Right?
He He lends a hand, as it were.
Right?
So the Torah speaks to us in the
language of human beings.
I think that's a good place to stop.
So I'm almost, so yeah.
I mean, we're done with Judaism. We have
to move on. There's a lot more to
say obviously.
That's only
the 3rd out of 13 principles. Maybe we
can do a second part of this course
later. But we are going to move. I
gave you the the basics of Jewish theology.
So we're going to move next week
to Christianity.
So a look at the New Testament. What
is the New Testament? A look at Isa,
alayhis salaam, from a from a Christian perspective,
and a look at the trinity. What is
the trinity? What is it not? It's important
for us to understand
what is the trinity,
what do Christians actually believe,
at least what do their books,
how do how do their classical traditional books
define the trinity. It's very important for us
to understand that. So see you next week.