Arama, Isaac ben Moses

 Like many of his fifteenth-century Spanish contemporaries, Arama opposed the Aristotelianism of Maimonides. His philosophical sermons and biblical commentaries attack Jewish Aristotelians on charges of subordinating revelation to reasoning, upholding an eternal universe whose necessity limits God's power, and excluding miracles and individual providence. Yet while stressing the fallibility of human reason, Arama is no fideist. An eclectic, he values reason and philosophy as ways of deepening the understanding of Scripture through allegorical interpretation. He also develops striking philosophical theories of miracles, providence and the fundamentals of faith. A leading rabbi of the generation that underwent expulsion from Spain in 1492, Isaac ben Moses Arama is best known for the philosophical sermons he composed to counter the conversionist Christian sermons which his congregants were compelled to attend. Preserved in the chapters of his popular and influential biblical commentary, 'Aqedat Yitzhaq (The Binding of Isaac), each of these discourses has two parts, one addressing a philosophical or theological problem, the other, like the scholastic quaestiones and dubitationes, raising issues in the exegesis of a biblical passage, which is then interpreted in light of the earlier philosophical account. Arama is most influenced by Halevi and Crescas among Jewish thinkers; and, among the Muslims, by al-Ghazali.