Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until the modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and worldview. With their admission into broader modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the world's demands in which they now found themselves.

Medieval rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the ''Geonim'' of 10th-century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy into Biblical-Talmudic Judaism. During the ''Geonic'' period, philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic Rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with historical events that drew Jews to the Kabbalistic approach. For the Ashkenazi Jews of Western Europe, emancipation and encounters with secular thought from the 18th century onwards altered how philosophy was viewed. Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe and Sephardi communities had comparatively later, more ambivalent interactions with secular cultures than those of Western Europe. In the varied responses to modernity, Jewish philosophical ideas were developed across a range of emerging religious movements. These developments could be seen as either the continuation of or breaks from the canon of Rabbinic philosophy of the Middle Ages and the other historical dialectic aspects of Jewish thought, resulting in diverse contemporary Jewish attitudes to philosophical methods.

Ancient Jewish philosophy

Philo of Alexandria

Philo attempted to fuse and harmonize Greek and Jewish philosophy through allegory, which he learned from Jewish exegesis and Stoicism. Philo attempted to make his philosophy the means of defending and justifying Jewish religious ''truths''. These ''truths'' he regarded as fixed and determinate, and philosophy was used as an aid to ''truth'', and a means of arriving at it. To this end Philo chose from philosophical tenets of Greeks, refusing those that did not harmonize with Judaism such as Aristotle's doctrine of the ''eternity and indestructibility of the world''.

Jewish scholarship after destruction of Second Temple

With the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Second Temple Judaism was in disarray. Still, Jewish traditions were preserved especially thanks to the shrewd maneuvers of Johanan ben Zakai, who saved the Sanhedrin and moved it to Yavne. Philosophical speculation was not a central part of Rabbinic Judaism, but some have seen the Mishnah as a philosophical work. Rabbi Akiva has also been viewed as a philosopher figure. He is credited with the following teachings in the Mishnah:

* "How favored is man, for he was created in the image f God"
* "All things are foreseen y God yet the freedom to choose is given nto man and the world is judged on tsmerits, while everything is according to the preponderance of ood or badworks."

After the Bar Kokhba revolt, rabbinic scholars gathered in Tiberias and Safed to re-assemble and re-assess Judaism, its laws, theology, liturgy, beliefs, and leadership structure. In 219 CE, the Sura Academy (from which Jewish Kalam emerged many centuries later) was founded by Abba Arika. For the next five centuries, Talmudic academies focused on reconstituting Judaism, and little, if any, philosophic investigation was pursued.

Who influences whom?

Rabbinic Judaism had limited philosophical activity until it was challenged by Islam, Karaite Judaism, and Christianity—with Tanakh, Mishnah, and Talmud, there was previously no explicit requirement for a philosophic framework. From an economic viewpoint, Radhanite trade dominance was being usurped by coordinated Christian and Islamic forced conversions and torture, compelling Jewish scholars to apprehend nascent economic threats. These investigations yielded intellectual exchange between Jewish and Islamic scholars in jurisprudence, mathematics, astronomy, logic, and philosophy. Jewish scholars influenced Islamic scholars, and Islamic scholars influenced Jewish scholars. Contemporary scholars continue to debate who was Muslim and who was Jewish—some "Islamic scholars" were Jewish scholars prior to forced conversion to Islam, and there were episodic willing conversions of Jewish scholars to Islam (such as Abdullah ibn Salam). In contrast, others later reverted to Judaism, and still others, born and raised as Jews, were ambiguous in their public religious beliefs, such as ibn al-Rawandi. However, they lived according to the customs of their Muslim neighbors.

Around 700 CE, ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd Abu ʿUthman al-Basri introduced two streams of thought that influenced Jewish, Islamic, and Christian scholars:
# ''Qadariyah''
# ''Bahshamiyya'' ''Muʿtazila''

The story of the ''Bahshamiyya Muʿtazila'' and ''Qadariyah'' is as important, if not more so, as the intellectual symbiosis of Judaism and Islam in Islamic Spain.

Around 733 CE, Mar Natronai ben Habibai moved to Kairouan, then to Spain, transcribing the Talmud ''Bavli'' for the Academy at Kairouan from memory—later taking a copy with him to Spain.

Karaism

Borrowing from the ''Mutakallamin'' of Basra, the Karaites were the first Jewish group to subject Judaism to ''Muʿtazila''. Rejecting the Talmud and Rabbinical tradition, Karaites took radical liberty to reinterpret the Tanakh

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