{"id":69758,"date":"2020-02-05T23:46:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T21:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=69758"},"modified":"2023-09-04T16:56:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T13:56:07","slug":"jeremiah-v-maimonides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jeremiah-v-maimonides\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremiah v. Maimonides"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[429,868,458,449],"acf":{"old_id":"69758","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64460,"related_cahpter":"410","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Do idolaters really believe that their idols are gods?\u00a0\r\n","content":"

The tenth chapter of Jeremiah begins with a polemic against the idolatry of \u201cthe nations.\u201d The prophet revels in the ridiculousness of foreign worship; why, he asks, would anyone bow down before \u201cthe work of a craftsman\u2019s hands\u201d? He catalogues the laborious process by which the idol is produced \u2014 the felling of a tree, the smelting of precious metals, the careful carpentry to combine the two. But the result of all this work, Jeremiah states, is useless: <\/span><\/p>\n

They cannot speak. They have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Be not afraid of them, for they can do no harm; nor is it in them to do any good.<\/span><\/p>\n

There could be no greater contrast to the God of Israel, of whom Jeremiah proclaims <\/span><\/p>\n

the LORD is truly God: he is a living God, the everlasting King. At His wrath, the earth quakes, and nations cannot endure His rage.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not necessary to be a historian of religion to feel that something is a little off in Jeremiah\u2019s description of \u2018idolatry.\u2019 Could it really be the case that the foreign worshiper believes his handiwork itself to be a god? Maimonides thought this impossible. In his <\/span>Guide of the Perplexed<\/em> <\/span>he writes that:<\/span><\/p>\n

No human being of the past has ever imagined on any day, and no human being of the future will ever imagine, that the form he fashions either from cast metal or from stone and wood has created and governs the heavens and the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Maimonides, idolaters are not even disbelievers in the true God \u2014 rather, the statues they fashion are of intermediaries between humanity and YHWH. While their actions still infringe on the sovereignty of God and are thus condemnable, for Maimonides the issue is at bottom one of cognitive error.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeremiah and Maimonides offer two very different approaches to the problem with which religious diversity presents monotheism. Do we react emotionally, or intellectually, to the distressing fact that so many deny what seems to us to be the most important of truths? Jeremiah\u2019s satire does not really take idolatry seriously; indeed, his words seem to have less to do with real idolatry than with an imaginary idolatry against which his monotheism defines itself. Maimonides, on the other hand, assumes that idolaters are not stupid, and that though their practices may be deviant they are ultimately comprehensible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, neither of these texts provide a very promising basis for the kind of dialogue we expect between members of different faith traditions today. What they do make clear, however, is just how difficult it can be to take the other seriously on their own terms \u2014 we always face the danger of explaining the inner lives others as merely deviations from or modifications of our own perspective. What is even more difficult is to interpret the other charitably without letting go of one\u2019s own perspective. In the final estimation, it may be that Maimonides\u2019 approach, flawed as it is, approximates this latter goal more closely than Jeremiah\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

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