of homilies, and metaphysical treatises modelled
upon the works of the schoolmen set forth a philosophical Judaism for
the learned world. It is notable also that these last were not written
in Hebrew or in the Talmudic dialect, but in Arabic, the language of
their cultured environment; for though the missionary spirit was dead,
the controversial activity of the period impelled the Jewish
philosophers to present their ideas in the form used by the
philosophers of the general community.

It is not only the general conditions of the Arab-Jewish period, but
also the special development of Jewish ideas, which recalls the work
of the Alexandrian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, seeing
that in both cases there was a mingling of Hebraism and Hellenism. In
Spain, however, the Jews acquired Hellenism at second hand, and
through the somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or
scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony is neither complete
nor pure. They endeavored to show that the teachings of Aristotle are
implicit in the written and the oral law, but the interpretation is
hardly convincing even in "The Guide of the Perplexed," of Maimonides,
the monumental work which marks the culmination of mediaeval Jewish
philosophy.

If there is one figure in Jewish tradition with whom Philo challenges
at once comparison and contrast, it is Maimonides, the brightest star
of the Arabic, as he was of the Hellenic, development of the Jewish
religion. Though there is nothing on which to found any direct
influence of the one on the other, the aim, the method, the scope of
their philosophical work are the same, the relation which they hold to
exist between faith and philosophy wellnigh identical. The metaphysics
of the Bible, according to both, is hidden beneath an allegory, and
is meant only for the more learned of the people. To Maimonides the
Bible is not only the standard of all wisdom, but it is "the Divine
anticipation of human discovery." In the words of Hosea, God has
therein "multiplied visions and spoken in similitudes" (xii. 11). The
duty of the Jewish philosopher is to expound these metaphors and
similes; and Maimonides, endeavoring to knit Greek metaphysics closely
with Jewish tradition, propounds a science of allegorical values,
which by exact philological study traces the inner as well as the
outer meaning of the Hebrew words. But differentiated as it is by
greater mastery of the tradition and closer adhere