Joseph Albo - Fundamental Principles and Their Derived Truths

Fundamental Principles and Their Derived Truths

According to Albo, the first of his fundamental root-principles, the belief in the existence of God, embraces the following shorashim, or secondary radicals:

  1. God's unity
  2. God's incorporeality
  3. God's independence of time
  4. God's perfection: in God there can be neither weakness nor other defect.

The second root-principle—the belief in revelation, or the communication of divine instruction by God to man—leads him to derive the following three secondary radicals:

  1. The Hebrew prophets are the mediums of God's revelation
  2. The belief in the unique greatness of Moses as a prophet
  3. The binding force of the Mosaic law until another shall have been divulged and proclaimed in as public a manner (before six hundred thousand men). No later prophet has, consequently, the right to abrogate the Mosaic dispensation.

From the third root principle, the belief in divine justice, he derives one secondary radical: the belief in bodily resurrection.

According to Albo, therefore, the belief in the Messiah is only a "twig". It is not necessary to the soundness of the trunk. It is, hence, not an integral part of Judaism. Nor is it true that every law is binding. Though every ordinance has the power of conferring happiness in its observance, it is not true that every law must be observed, or that through the neglect of a part of the law, a Jew would violate the divine covenant or be damned.

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