Abstract
Over the centuries, many Jewish thinkers have embraced a universal approach in which the universalism of the prophets is joined with the philosophic monotheism of the Middle Ages. They accept a universal truth available to all humanity beyond, but not against, revelation. In a universal truth there is no need to refer to Judaism as the single truth; rather all knowledge is grounded in a higher divine knowledge, or a unified sense of rationality, or the natural abilities of the mind and soul. This approach, at times, blurs the line between religion and philosophy or between religion and ethics. However, religiously universalists remain close to the inclusivists in that everything is grounded in the teachings of Judaism.
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Notes
Sa’adiah Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), x.
Raphael Jospe, “Ha-Hagadah Ha-Ne’emenet Shel Rabbi Sa’adiah Gaon: Mi Hem Qehal Ha-Meya hadim?” Da’at 41 (Summer 1998): 5–17; and “Additional Note” in Da’at 42 (Winter 1999): IX. He rejects Pines who interprets “the community of monotheists” exclusively as the Jews;
S. Pines, “A Study of the Impact of Indian, Mainly Buddhist, Thought on Some Aspects of Kalam Doctrines,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 17 (1994): 182–203;
This section is indebted to Raphael Jospe, “Pluralism out of the Sources of Judaism: Religious Pluralism Without Relativism” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations volume 2 issue 2 (2007) 92–113.
Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 45.
Aaron Hughes, The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 111, 206.
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Jacob Anatoli, Malmad Hatalmidim (Lyck, 1866), Noah 12a.
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Yair Shiffman, Shem Tov ben Joseph Ibn Falaquera, Moreh ha-Moreh (2001): 141.
Isaac Albalag, Sefer Tikkun Hadaot, edition Georges Vajda (Jerusalem, 1973), 69.
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Joshua Hoffman, “Rav Kook’s Mission to America,” OROT 1, 5751 (1991): 78–99.
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© 2010 Alan Brill
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Brill, A. (2010). The Universalist Tradition. In: Judaism and Other Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230105683_5
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