Jewish Intellectual Evolution in the Context of Civilizational Exchanges and Mutual Learning: Revisiting Dong Xiuyuan's A Study of Maimonides' Cosmogony

Abstract

Dong Xiuyuan's monograph A Study of Maimonides' Cosmogony is one of the most representative achievement by Chinese scholars these years for the studies in Maimonides. By focusing on the cosmogony issue within Maimonides' intellectual system, Dong critically examines related international academic research moving freely between Jewish and Greek philosophical classics, the intellectual worlds of the Mediterranean, Christian theology, Kalam, Sabianism, Arabic Aristotelianism, and even Indian Buddhist thought, successfully reveals Maimonides' intellectual genealogy and his influences on this topic. In this review, I will specifically highlight these topics covered in the book, including "Cosmogony" as a fundamental theological issue in Judaism, Maimonides' controversy with Sabianism, "dialectical argument" as the key to interpreting Maimonides, the origins of Kalam's Atomism-Occasionalism in either ancient Greece or India, and the reception and study on Maimonides' thought and his The Guide for the Perplexed. Overall, this book paints a vivid picture of civilization exchanges and the Jewish intellectual evolution, and it advances the construction of an academic discourse system for Maimonidean studies in China.