Maimonides, the name by which Christians generally know the great Jewish teacher, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, who from the initials of these words is called by the Jews RAMBAM. He was born at Cordova, March 30, 1135, and received his first instruction from his father. Under the most distinguished Arabic masters of the time he then devoted himself to the study of Greek (Aristotelian) philosophy, the science of medicine, and theology. Under the Almohades his family had to conform outwardly to Mohammedanism, and ultimately emigrated to Egypt, and Maimonides became physician to the reigning sultan, Saladin. At Cairo he died December 13, 1204. His importance for the religion and science of Judaism, and his influence upon their development, are so gigantic that he has not unjustly been placed second to Moses, the great lawgiver, himself. He first of all brought order into those almost boundless receptacles of tradition, and the discussions and decisions to which they had given rise, which, without the remotest attempt at system or method, lie scattered up and down the works of Haggada and Halacha—Midrash, Mishnah, Talmuds. Imbued with the spirit of lucid Greek speculation, and the logical thought of the Arabic Peripatetics, Maimonides, aided by an enormous knowledge, became the founder of rational Scripture exegesis. The Bible, and all its written as well as implied precepts, he endeavoured to explain by the light of reason, with which, as the highest divine gift in man, nothing really divine could stand in real contradiction. The miracles themselves, though not always traceable to their immediate cause, yet cannot be wrought in opposition to the physical and everlasting laws in nature. Where literal interpretation seems to jar upon the feelings of reverential awe towards the Highest Being, there an allegorical explanation is to be adopted unhesitatingly. As to the philosophical system of Maimonides, we can barely hint at its close similarity with that of Averroes. Maimonides fully allows the freedom of will, and holds that providence reigns in a broad manner over humanity; but he utterly denies the working of providence in the single event that befalls the individual, who, subject above all to the great physical laws, must learn to understand and obey them. The soul, and the soul only, is immortal, and the reward of virtue consists in its unbody bliss in a world to come; while the punishment of vice is the 'loss of the soul.'
Maimonides' first work of paramount importance is his Arabic commentary of the Mishnah, which forms an extensive historical introduction to Tradition, or the Oral Law; and this introduction, translated into Hebrew, has now for more than five hundred years been deemed so essential a part of the Talmud itself that no edition of the latter is considered complete without it. This was followed by the Sefer Hammezvoth, or Book of the Precepts, in Arabic, which contains an enumeration of the 613 traditional laws of the Halacha; the text was first edited by M. Bloch (Paris, 1888). This book is to be considered chiefly as an introduction to the gigantic work which followed in 1180, under the title of Mishne Torah ('Second Law'), or Yad Chasakah ('Strong Hand'), a Hebrew compendium in 982 chapters, embracing the entire Halacha. The summit of his renown, however, Maimonides reached in his grand Arabic work, Delalath Al-Hairin (translated into Hebrew by R. Tibbon as Moreh Nebochim, 'Guide of the Erring'), a philosophical exegesis, which, while on the one hand it has contributed more than any other work to the progress of rational development in Judaism, has on the other hand also become the arena for a long and bitter fight between orthodoxy and science, between the spiritualistic Maimonian and the 'literal Talmudistic' schools. Ultimately the antagonistic parties came to a reconciliation, and Maimonides' name became the pride and glory of the race; and as early as the 13th century, already portions of his works, chiefly the Morch ('Doctor Perplexorum'), became, in Latin versions, the text-books even of European universities. See The Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides, translated and annotated by Friedländer (3 vols. 1886); and his Life of Maimonides.