Contents
The Guide for the Perplexed was originally written in Arabic and was first translated into Hebrew by a contemporary of Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon. The work is divided into three books. According to Maimonides, he wrote the Guide "to promote the true understanding of the real spirit of the Law, to guide those religious persons who, adhering to the Torah, have studied philosophy and are embarrassed by the contradictions between the teachings of philosophy and the literal sense of the Torah," and his main purpose is to expound on Maaseh Bereishit and Maaseh Merkavah, works of Jewish mysticism regarding the theology of creation from Genesis and the passage of the Chariot from Ezekiel, these being the two main mystical texts in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). This analysis occurs in the third book, and from this perspective, the issues raised in the first two books are there to provide background and a progression in the mystical and philosophical knowledge required to ponder the climax.
Read more about this topic: The Guide For The Perplexed
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“Such as boxed
Their feelings properly, complete to tags
A box for dark men and a box for Other
Would often find the contents had been scrambled.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Conversation ... is like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)