OF RELIGIOUS INTEREST

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25797, 7 May 1949, Page 3

OF RELIGIOUS INTEREST

The Guide for the Perplexed: Moses Maimonides. By Leon , Roth. Hutchinson’s Universal Library. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

The Beginnings of Religion. By the Rev. Professor E. O. James. Hutchinson’s University Library. 156 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. A History of Palestine. By James Parkes. Gollancz. 391 pp. [Reviewed by L.G.W.]

“Between Moses and Moses there is none greater than Moses.” In this Jewish saying, the first Moses referred to is the great Lawgiver; the second is Moses Mendelsohn, the eighteenthcentury philosopher of the Enlightenment; the last is Moses Maimonides. the philosophical theologian, who was born in Cordova in 1135 A.D. The present book has been written by Professor Roth, of Jerusalem, as an introduction and commentary on the “Guide” of Moses Maimonides. This work was written by its author, wnen, an exile from Spain, he acted as V*iysician to the Court of Egypt. - The® “Guide” became one of the most Influential of medieval books, being studied both by Jew and by Gentile. Maimonides’ object in writing was to make Judaism intelligible to the Jews of his time. In the “Guide” he seis out the rational foundations on which his other works are based. It is a work of apologetics. He attacks what we now call Fundamentalism; i.e., the* belief in the literal truth of everything in the Biblical text. He mates great use of the allegorical interpretation of the Bible and thus purges away its grosser anthropomorphisms. God is unknowable in His essence, but can be known through His works and working. Maimonides attacks contemporary “theologians” for their reliance on the miraculous, for his world is one of coherence of structure and regularity of behaviour; that is, of law. He is equally severe on the “scientists” who, when they make their specialist knowledge a measure of the whole of reality, fall into serious error. The “scientists” of those days were the followers of Aristotle, and Maimonides saw clearly that the God of Aristotle was not the God of the Bible. He was well aware of the problem of evil but considers it of minor importance in the vastness of the universe. The perplexed must remember that “God is very near to

everyone who calls in truth and turn.*to H ? m; He .is found by everyone whe inquires and seeks for Him if he walk straight and turn not aside.” Professor James’s small but usefu book is an early volume in Messrs Hutchinson’s Universal Library. The author is a well-known authority or his subject, which he treats in chapters on the sacred, providence, spirits ancestors, gods, sacrifice, sacrament spell, prayer, immortality, myth, anc ritual. The author’s purpose in this work is to give an account of the rudimentary ideas of religion and its fundamental practices in their historical. sociological, and psychological context. Within his self-chosen limits he has done his work well and the average reader interested in the subject will find here a clear and intelligible exposition of our present knowledge of early religion. Each chapter is furnished with a short bibliography. This volume is to be followed by others in a series on World Religions. Mr Parkes has written a pro-Jewish history of Palestine from 135 A.D. to modern times. Considering the immense field covered, the author has told his tale well, though he has had to summarise his history in a way that diminishes its interest and places a great burden on the memory. Mr Parkes’s object is to give his readers a background for understanding the facts behind the Jewish-Arab difficulties in present-day Palestine. He has a good style and sets out the blood-stained annals of the Holy Land with considerable fairness until he comes to th£ later period of the British Mandate. He admits the factious nature of Jewish politics in Palestine, with the complication the* the majority rested with parties of the Left while ae liberal “General Zionists” had a small, representation, so that the result was an unstable and often hysterical political activity in Hebrew circles. While the Jews had their gangsters and the Arabs theif assassins, the British had the “apparent” impossibility of reconciling Jewish and Arab demands. The Jews could not withstand the pressure of the European tragedy which laid on Zionist leaders—a duty above all others—that of providing a refuge for as manv Jews as by hook and by crook could be brought into the shelter of the National Home. To the onlooker, the Zionist solution seems to have been to cure the Euro-

pean tragedy by creating an Asiatic one; viz., by the expulsion of the Arabs, who at this moment are in danger of dying by thousands. However this may be, Mr Parkes finds one partv to the quarrel always to blame: “At bottom it was the British attitude which had rendered the problem insoluble.”