Medieval Jewish philosophers thinking about creation were influenced by Aristotle’s model of an eternally existing world, by Kalam arguments for a created universe, and of course by the Biblical account of creation found in Genesis. Aristotle’s theory of time reinforces a cosmology supportive of an eternally existing universe, thus obviating the need for a creator. Although Aristotle’s eternity thesis is often regarded as the target of medieval philosophers, both Dhanani and Langermann suggest that it was possibly Galen rather than Aristotle who posed an equal if not greater threat. In contrast to Aristotle, both Greek and Islamic atomists denied the continuity of time, and posited the existence of discrete time atoms, thus undermining the very assumption that things “persist” through time. Like Aristotle, Galen was famous for having denied creation and emphasizing a self-contained natural order that eschewed a creator; because Galen was careful to reject atomism, the Islamic Kalam theologians might have gravitated toward atomism as an effort to develop an alternative world-view to the Galenic. Given Galen’s staunch anti-atomist views, Langermann suggests that “it is not beyond the realm of the possible that Galen’s notion of minima, and not just his reports concerning his atomist opponents, had some influence upon the Mutakallimûn.”

INTRODUCTION

The development of the concepts of time, place, and the continuum in medieval Jewish philosophy involves three sets of issues. The first issue has to do with divine omniscience from the perspective of the apparent discontinuity between past and future. Clearly the past appears to be fixed in a way that the future is not. More bluntly, the past is actual whereas the future is possible. From the divine perspective there is no ontological difference between past and future: All events exist in an “eternal now” for God, and so what is possible from the human perspective is actual from God’s eternal gaze. A second issue is related to the notion of creation. Traditionally, God the Creator is said to be eternal, or outside of time, whereas creatures are construed as being in time, or subject to the flow of time. By understanding the notion of creation and how an eternal, timeless Creator created a temporal universe, we may begin to understand how the notions of eternity and time function. A third issue, having to do with infinity and the continuum, leads to consideration of the notion of space (or place). The problem of infinite divisibility, which has vexed philosophers since the time of Zeno, centers on whether both time and space are infinitely divisible. If only one is divisible, we are left with a discontinuity between space and time, and yet if both space and time are infinitely divisible, then numerous paradoxes result, such as Zeno’s celebrated “Achilles and the Tortoise.”

The following concise presentations are intended as a convenience for readers of this volume alone. The list of philosophers should not be viewed as exhaustive, but rather as presenting the major figures discussed in the foregoing chapters. Nor is the information presented here meant to replace the more substantive accounts to be found in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Additional information can be found as well in Sirat 1990. In many cases, little of a personal nature is known about these figures. We have tried to provide, at the very least, the following information: author’s name (along with most common variants); dates; and most important philosophical texts. Secondary material is provided in the comprehensive bibliography that follows.

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ABNER OF BURGOS (Alfonso of Valladolid, Alfonso of Burgos)

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: ca. 1270–1340. Anti-Jewish polemicist and apostate who converted because of difficulties understanding the suffering of God’s chosen people. Many of his works engaged Jewish scholars in dialogue and debate over this and other similar theo-philosophical issues. Much of Abner’s writings were written in Hebrew and later translated into Castilian. Abner wrote in efforts to formulate arguments for conversion from Judaism to Christianity. His philosophy accepts predestination, astrology, and determinism.

In a classic article, Shlomo Pines argued that post-Thomistic Scholasticism, most notably Duns Scotus and the school of Parisian physics (e.g., Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme), had a strong impact upon fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Jewish philosophy. Pines pointed in this article to the “interest displayed by contemporary Jewish thinkers in the new problems under discussion, or in the old problems in a new formulation unfamiliar to the Arabic-Jewish tradition.” In what follows I shall explore Pines' thesis against the backdrop of specific issues in Jewish philosophy. More specifically, I shall claim that Scholastic influences upon fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Jewish philosophy can be seen in the increased attention paid to Scholastic logic, in increased analysis of the logical and theological status of future contingents, in metaphysical concerns having to do with identity and individuation, and in the development of non-Aristotelian physics. Before turning to the issues themselves, however, I would like to situate this study by briefly examining important developments within the world of Christian Scholasticism.

INTRODUCTION: FAITH, BELIEF, AND HERESY IN SCHOLASTIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

In order to appreciate the content of Scholastic discussions during this period, we must say more about the importance of the condemnation of philosophy of 1277. The condemnation of 1277 represents the culmination of a series of earlier condemnations in the Christian universities, and raised the thorny issue of heresy.