His Arabic name was Abu Imran Mussa bin Maimum ibn Abdallah al-Qurtubi al-Israili. His Hebrew name was Moshe ben Maimon. History calls him Moses Maimonides. The Jews made an acronym of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon and call him RaMBaM or 'The' Rambam. He was born in Cordoba, Spain in old Andalucia in 1135 and he died in Fostat, Egypt in 1204 while Pooler Jones and Barber Perfect and Kenny La Roche were sacking Christian Constantinople in the Bullshit called the 4th Crusade.
Cordoba was the capital of Civilization in those days but had reached the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. The Rambam was an avid supporter of the 'Exact' Sciences, Philosophy, and Mathematics. Though Andalucia was the center of Kabbalah - Moshe ben Maimon was having none of it. Mysticism was for the smokers of Kif and the dark Hashish which found its way out of Arabia. Since Poetry and the other Arts were based on invention, Maimonides thought them false and he despised everything which was inexact and did not stand in place of only what it meant.
When the Ball-Busting Almohades swept up out of Africa and conquered Cordoba in 1148 they gave the Jews of Andalucia these choices: Conversion to Islam, Death, or Exile. The Rambam - with most other Jews - chose the Highway and for a decade Moshe and his family bumped around southern Spain looking for Haven and staying the fuck out of the way of the bloody Almohades. They settled in Fez in Morocco and Maimonides hunkered down at the University of Al Karaouine where he sank into Aristotle - an ancient who had otherwise disappeared from the West but who had always been revered by Arab and Islamic thinkers. It was in Fez that he wrote his Commentary on the Mishna. For awhile he lived in the Holy Land before hooking up with the Grand Vizier Alfadhil and Sultan Saladin in Egypt. He took the position of Physician to the Vizier and Sultan because that's what Jewish Scholars did - they drifted into 'Medicine' which was a subject synonymous with scholarship. In Egypt, RaMBaM buried himself in Islamic thinking and wrote all the rest of his Great Works: Sefer Hamitzvot, Mishneh Torah - the first and most comprehensive code of Jewish Law. He attempted to harmonize Judaic thinking with Aristotle in his famous Guide for the Perplexed and also penned the Treatise on Logic which is still in print today. He wrote medical texts on Poisons, Hemorrhoids, Asthma, and the Semiosis of Symptoms. He was the most influential Jewish thinker and philosopher in the Medieval - if not in all of Jewish history. The Jews have a saying: "From Moshe [Moses of the Torah] to Moshe [the Rambam] there was none like Moshe." He died in Egypt and was buried in Tiberias which is now in Israel. No other Jewish thinker has had as much influence on both Jewish and Western Philosophy as Maimonides of Cordoba.
In Mokum, Spinoza grew up on a steady diet of RaMBaM. Like Aquinas in Catholicism, Maimonides was the Source of so much Jewish wisdom that a Yoot could confuse the Man with the Faith itself. Maimonides was pure Jewish Auctoritas. Every Yeshiva boy could Rote you the Rambam for hours on end. Here's the thing: Maimonides was Orthodox - none of that Hippy Shit about how much was Hidden and Ideal. Like his mentor, Aristotle, Moshe ben Maimon was all nuts and bolts. All hard-edged Nouns. The Law, to the Rambam, was Explicit and Point-Particle. Let Plato and the Lurianics stew in their Metaphysics and in their Heavenly Archetypes - Religion to guys like Ari and Moshe was QED and Teleologically moved by means of 'Ends' and 'Goals.' It came to grip with Causes and Effects. The Aristotelian/Maimonean Mindset has Wood for Efficient Causes - and when you get to Final Causes, the Mentalité squirts. It's messy, but Logic cleans up after itself and without all the Mysticism and Transmutations there is no slag, no dross, no waste product at all. Maimonides was all about the Halakha - the Law - and the Law had 3 clear sources: 1. the original 613 Commandments of God, aka - the Mitzvas - laid down in the Torah. 2. Mishnah - Oral Law, the classical Rabbinical debates - passed down by family mouths until it was written in the 3rd Century CE. And the Gemorah - Rabbinical Commentary on the Mishnah from both Jerusalem and the Babylonian Communities. 3. The Shulkhan Arukh - the 'Set Table' - from a 16th Century Sephardic Kabbalist named Joe Karo . The Set Table blends the Talmudic 'Discussions' into the Halakha. Orthodox Jews are governed by the Set Table even though they reject Karo's Kabbalistic approach. In Mokum it was the Ashkenazic Jews, with their tradition of "Talmudic Legalistic Disputation,' who flew the Philosophical Banner of Maimonides and the Set Table. Baruch Spinoza did not follow that flag. He appreciated the "Sacramentalizing of Logic" which the Halakha demanded and the Rambamers practiced. And he liked that way Moshe ben used Reason as an implement to Merge with God. But the Rambamers never went far enough with either - their Logic or their Reason. And thus they missed the Most of God. Rabbi Morteira was the Keeper and Guardian of the 'Set Table' and the Soul of Maimonides. He had his eye on Baruch Spinoza as his possible replacement. But them fuckin' Portogeeze came to Mokum with Kabbalic Hemorrhoids & Sandnigger Quirks and by god Rabbi Mort and his Whippin' Stick all knobby with the Sigils of the Anshe Shem was just the dude to crack a lil' Halakha on their asses! Sister Samuel used the same approach with Skippy. When god loosened up in a Boy you had to use Spanners & Wrenches and sometimes a Ballpeen Hammer.
Spacefillers - always worry about the Spacefillers. Like Spanish Plateresque and Portuguese Manueline, you should be warned about Folk when you see that their arts and designs attempt to fill all the space available on the 'canvas' or medium. The Orthodox want all laws to be followed all of the time and to the Letter of the Law. They do not allow doubt. In the earlier and more liberal stages of a Religion the Icons and Art generated by that faith are episodic, discrete, and permit the Profane its due. Their imagery has not yet reached a stage of Auctoritas when carvings around the messages ring the messages as underscoring and sacred borders. When you underline or outline a statement you make a claim as to its validity. When you use all the space on the wall you simultaneously forbid anything else from being 'said' while you Highlight the Truth of your statement with Regal fringes. God gave the Jews 613 Commandments. Worry about that. RaMBaM boiled them, along with the Misnah, the Gemorah, and the aptly named 'Set Table,' down to 13 Principles of the Jewish Faith. 13 Things every Jew must believe - a kind of Jewish Apostle's Creed.
1. The Existence of God
2. God's Unity
3. God's Spirituality and Incorporeality
4. God's Eternity
5. God Alone can be Worshipped
6. Revelation comes thru God's Prophets
7. Moses is #1 Prophet		 8. God's Law given on Mount Sinai
9. The Immutability of the Torah as God's Law
10. God's Foreknowledge of Human Actions
11. Reward of Good and Punishment of Evil
12. The Coming of the Jewish Messiah
13. The Resurrection of the Dead
It was Thomas Aquinas who shook a ton of old Mithraic Shit and other Paganisms out of the Medieval Christian Church and then Coded the Dogma around the Organization still used today. Skippy had to translate parts of his Summa from the Latin when he was a Yoot getting whacked by Sister Samuel. Maimonides brought Order and Structure to the Jewish Faith by giving Forms to its myriad of Laws and often contradictory opinions. He was all about Logic and Reason - but like all the Orthodox and the Bean Counters he and His grew to believe that it was Order and System and Law itself which could not be transgressed. Ever. Linguists have claimed that Hebrew has a difficult time in forming Abstractions because the language is "Obsessively Concrete." It does not easily bend to form higher orders and principles. Maybe Kabbalah had to come from Spain - Latin languages form Abstractions effortlessly. Thru the lens of Sapir/Whorf you could make this prediction about speakers of languages which are obsessively concrete and therefore do not form abstractions easily: they would have to use more Circumlocution - they would talk their way around the problem by using more words to say that which might be said more economically with an abstraction. Therefore they would appear as 'Talky.' Stereotypes are offensive, but they may not be wrong. James Watson paid those dues.
The only place where Spinoza and Maimonides really came together - since, in the end, Baruch would argue against over half of the Rambam's 13 Principles of Faith - was on the practice of Negative Theology. Both Moshe ben Maimon and Spinoza warned against the Human tendency to give god Anthropomorphic qualities. Monkeys see the gods only in terms of themselves. Thus they claim that god is a Father, that he has a Mother, that god is good or worse: that god is Just. Apophatic Theology is a NeoPlatonic concept that to avoid casting god thru mirrors we should only make statements about what god is Not and not what god Is. To say that god is Wise is to claim a degree of gnosis which is foolish in comparisons. Skippy is Wise. God is Not Stupid. We needlessly limit god by claiming that god is One. It's better - thought RaMBaM and Spinoza - to say that there is no Multiplicity in god. God Exists- they could not claim - but he sure as hell is not Non-Existent. Apophatic ruminations give Monkeys both Migraines and Hemorrhoids. But they are totally Zen and even Gödelian - which is probably why Postmodern Monkeys are still interested in the Rambam and Bento de Espinosa. Kenny is wildly Apophatic and says this: if you think that god is Omni-Omni then you must logically believe that the most Powerful of all the All-Powerful gods would be the god who did not have to exist.
Maimonides does not go this far. Nor does Spinoza . . . exactly. But the Rambam adds an interesting twist in his Guide for the Perplexed. If you think that god gets pissed-off at sinners then this is an example of a `Necessary Belief ' as opposed to a `True Belief.' God is Not Unkind - is a True Belief. It is logically and intellectually perfect. A Necessary Belief is a claim which is logically and intellectually wrong but which is Necessary to Believe anyway so that a Good might follow. God has no Monkey Emotions so he does not get 'angry' at sinners. But since believing he does keeps Monkeys from sinning then it is Necessary that we do. Skippy just loves the way 'Believers' tie themselves in knots. It reminds him of the Medieval Christian Scholastic practice of 'Double-Truthing.' You could teach the Truths of the Natural World at the University of Paris in the time of Thomas Aquinas - as long as Natural Truths did not Contradict Religious Truths. Then you were instructed to teach them both as True but to remind your students that Religious Truths always Trumped Natural Truths. As long as you stressed that somehow the Earth was still the Center of the Universe you could demonstrate the Science of the Copernican System. I defy Marvin Minski and his A.I. Imps to create an 'Artificial' Mind which can lie to itself while affirming the Truth.
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