Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works

by Herbert A. Davidson

Moses Maimonides (1137/38-1204), scholar, physician, and philosopher, was the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages. In this magisterial biography, Herbert Davidson provides an exhaustive guide to Maimonides' life and works. After considering Maimonides' upbringing and education, Davidson expounds all of his many writings in exhaustive detail, with separate chapters on rabbinic, philosophical, and medical texts. Moses Maimonides has been recognized as the standard work on a towering figure of Western intellectual history.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, History

584 pages, Hardcover

First published December 9, 2004

Reviews

[MM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and erudite book. Very scholarly, looking into the archival material as well as the content of all of Maimonides' works. Highly recommend for someone looking for a deep dive into Maimonides.

However, for most people, I believe Moshe Halbertal's work (Maimonides: Life and thought published by Princeton University Press) is a better, more accessible introduction. Davidson's work gets rather in the weeds about academic disputes dealing with manuscripts and so on.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the extent that you can really learn about the man through his written works (a tricky proposition), Davidson has done a great job in this volume. It is light on biographical narrative (the first hundred and some-odd pages) and heavy on description and analysis of MM's writings. Davidson spends a lot of time correcting widely-held beliefs about MM without coming across as an obsessive debunker. If he gets a bit flip here and there (especially with regard to MM's medical writings) he can be forgiven, because odds are you'll be staring bug-eyed and slack-jawed, a laugh climbing your throat, when you get an eyefull of some of MM's medical recommendations.