Maimonides on the "Decline of the Generations" and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority

by Menachem Kellner

• ISBN13: 9780791429211
• ISBN10: 0791429210
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2012-02-01
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (SUNY Press)

Summary

Moses Maimonides, medieval Judaism's leading legist and philosopher, and a figure of central importance for contemporary Jewish self-understanding, held a view of Judaism which maintained the authority of the Talmudic rabbis in matters of Jewish law while allowing for free and open inquiry in matters of science and philosophy. Maimonides affirmed, not the superiority of the "moderns" (the scholars of his and subsequent generations) over the "ancients" (the Tannaim and Amoraim, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud) but the inherent equality of the two. The equality presented here is not equality of halakhic authority, but equality of ability, of essential human characteristics.
In order to substantiate these claims, Kellner explores the related idea that Maimonides does not adopt the notion of "the decline of the generations," according to which each succeeding generation, or each succeeding epoch, is in some significant and religiously relevant sense inferior to preceding generations or epochs.

Author Biography

Menachem Kellner teaches medieval Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish History and Thought and is Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought and is Dean of Students at the University of Haifa.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Decline of the Generations

Maimonides on Nature and Miracles

Maimonides on Decline

Maimonides' Attitude towards the Authority of the Rabbis in non-Halakhic Matters

Maimonides on the "Advance" of the Generations

On the Nature of the Rabbis' Authority

Concluding (Quasi-) Scientific Postscript

Notes

References

Citations from Maimonides' Works

General Index

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