In the early 14th century, an ongoing controversy over the work of Moses Maimonides—or more generally over the relationship between philosophy and Judaism—flared up in the southern French region of Languedoc. Unlike previous episodes in which anti-Maimonideans challenged the acceptability of any study of Gentile philosophy, this one, which took place mainly among his admirers, concerned the line dividing acceptable philosophical interpretations of the Bible from outright heresy. Defending the Maimonidean position was the great scholar Menaḥem ha-Meiri. Gregg Stern writes:
Meiri records his community’s commitment to philosophy and the sciences as a change in orientation resulting from the 1204 publication of the Hebrew translation (from Arabic) by Samuel ibn Tibbon of [Maimonides’] Guide of the Perplexed.
In Meiri’s view, Maimonides had enlightened the Jews of Languedoc, and had invited them to integrate Greco-Arabic learning into their curriculum of Torah study; they had done so admirably, without harm to their talmudic studies. After four or five generations—by Meiri’s day—many Languedocian Jews had [accepted] this broader curriculum as a cultural ideal. Meiri emphasizes that the success of Languedocian talmudists with philosophic study had exercised no deleterious effect upon them.
Read more at Book of Doctrines and Opinions
More about: French Jewry, History & Ideas, Maimonides, Middle Ages, Philosophy