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jewish skeptics wikipedia jump to content main menu main menu move to sidebar hide navigation main page contents current events random article about wikipedia contact us contribute help learn to edit community portal recent changes upload file special pages search search appearance donate create account log in personal tools donate create account log in contents move to sidebar hide top 1 background on jewish skepticism toggle background on jewish skepticism subsection 1 1 skepticism in the bible and talmud 1 2 skepticism in the medieval era 1 3 skepticism in the early modern and modern period 2 skepticism on the god of judaism 3 skepticism on the authenticity of the torah 4 see also 5 notes toggle the table of contents jewish skeptics add languages add links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia jews who have held skeptical views on matters of the jewish religion jewish skeptics are jews historically jewish philosophers who have held skeptical views on matters of the jewish religion in general these skeptical views regard some or all of the principles of faith whatever these may be see maimonides albo but historically jewish skepticism is directed either at 1 the existence of the god of judaism or 2 the authenticity and veracity of the torah background on jewish skepticism edit citation needed a skeptic in the strongest sense is one who remains in a state of doubt declaring all positive truth religious or philosophical to be unattainable to man this type of skeptic can scarcely be found in judaism however bold the jewish philosophers of the middle ages were in their research or critical in their analytic methods they never so distrusted human reason as to deny it the power as the greek skeptics did to arrive at any positive knowledge or truth seer and sage alike appealed to reason to substantiate and verify the postulates of faith isa 40 26 job 12 7 the passage the lord is a god of knowledge i sam 2 3 is interpreted by the rabbis by the remark great is knowledge which leads from god to god ber 33a skepticism in the bible and talmud edit in a work by emile joseph dillon entitled the skeptics of the old testament london 1895 1973 it has been suggested that the authors of the book of job of ecclesiastes and of the words of agur the son of jakeh 1 were skeptics but the original compositions were so interpolated and remodeled as to make the skeptical points no longer noticeable all three contain bold arraignments of divine justice and providence as to the author of ecclesiastes compare e h plumptre s edition 2 he was almost driven back upon the formula of the skepticism of pyrrho who knows p 49 heinrich heine called the book das hohelied der skepsis 3 friedrich delitzsch in das buch hiob p 17 calls ecclesiastes das hohelied des pessimismus but he might as well have called it the song of skepticism jewish skepticism was always chiefly concerned with the moral government of the world the great problem of life with its righteous ones suffering woe and its wicked ones enjoying good fortune which puzzled the mind of jeremiah 4 and moses also according to the rabbis 5 and which finds striking expression in the psalms 6 created skeptics in talmudic as well as in earlier times elisha ben abuyah 7 became a skeptic as a consequence of seeing a person meet with a fatal accident at the very moment when he was fulfilling the two divine commandments for the observance of which scripture holds out the promise of a long life 8 skepticism in the medieval era edit the rationalistic era of islam produced skeptics among the jews of the time of saadia such as was ḥiwi al balkhi whose criticism tended to undermine the belief in revelation the emunot ve deot was written by saadia as he says in the preface because of the many doubters who were to be convinced of the truth and maimonides in the introduction to his moreh states that he wrote that work as a guide for those perplexed by doubt with all these jewish thinkers doubt is not a sin but an error that may reveal the pathway to the higher philosophical truth a remarkable type of skeptic was produced by the sixteenth century in uriel acosta who amidst a life of restless searching after truth denied the immortality of the soul and the divine revelation his excommunication by the amsterdam authorities was inspired by fear of the christian church rather than by traditional practice another such was leon of modena who complaining that the thinker is tortured by doubt whereas the blind believer enjoys peace of mind and bliss in the world to come see ari nohem quoted by h grätz gesch 3d ed x 130 arrived through skepticism at a liberal interpretation of traditional judaism see s stern der kampf des rabbiners gegen den talmud im xviii jahrhundert 1902 skepticism in the early modern and modern period edit strictly speaking jewish engagement with atheism i e disbelief in god s existence can scarcely be found before the modern period unless one expands the definition to include biblical condemnations of practical atheism i e non observance and jewish attraction to ancient world beliefs that might be said to have challenged the idea of jewish monotheism of course there were also debates about the existence of others gods e g disbelief in the official gods of the classical world or disbelief in the triune god of christianity which generated condemnations of jewish atheism likewise serious jewish encounters with the greek sources of philosophical scepticism i e disbelief that a true knowledge of things is attainable by humans are rare until thinkers like simone luzzatto in the early modern period although a weaker definition of scepticism i e doubts about authority and suspension of judgment in approaching sources of knowledge whether secular or sacred might be said to have a jewish legacy from the time of the first century philosopher philo onwards including tantalizing figures such as elisha ben abuyah in the talmud and especially in the form of medieval fideism i e the idea that faith is independent of reason these shallow intellectual eddies of pre modern doubt about god s existence and nature and about the veracity of human knowledge derived through tradition became stronger currents with the seventeenth century philosopher spinoza who was regarded by many as atheistic and with the eighteenth century jewish enlightenment or haskalah from that time suspicion of revealed religion began its ascendency and the ties of religion loosened so that less ambiguously sceptical expressions within jewry began to be heard however it was the nineteenth century culture of scientific progress and the attendant popular interest in ostensibly naturalistic and materialistic writings in the 1870s especially those of marx nietzsche and freud in germany spencer huxley and russell in england and ingersoll in the us that provoked a sea change in popular jewish thought increasingly the god of revelational religion simply appeared too naïve to countenance it was from that time that a good number of jewish thinkers felt obliged to establish oppositional alternative synthetic or complementary models explicitly relating judaism to the challenges of such atheistic and materialistic philosophies significant scholarship on the subject exists such as the studies of giuseppe veltri and david ruderman in the early modern period 1 but that scholarship tends to be localized and fragmented in nature and we still await a general survey of these related topic 2 1 among ruderman s most important contributions is david ruderman jewish thought and scientific discovery in early modern europe new haven conn yale university press 1995 veltri currently directs a research programme on jewish scepticism at the university of hamburg and among his most relevant publications is giuseppe veltri principles of jewish skeptical thought the case of judah moscato and simone luzzatto in rabbi judah moscato and the jewish intellectual world of mantua in 16th 17th centuries ed giuseppe veltri and gianfranco miletto boston brill 2012 together they co edited david ruderman and giuseppe veltri eds cultural intermediaries jewish intellectuals in early modern italy philadelphia university of pennsylvania press 2004 2 historically speaking the topics have not tended to feature in reference works there is however a short entry for atheism in the jewish encyclopedia its inclusion being best explained by the idiosyncratic philosophical and interfaith interests of the authors the reform rabbis emil g hirsch and kaufmann kohler emil g hirsch and kaufmann kohler atheism in jewish encyclopedia ed isidore singer new york funk and wagnalls company 1901 1906 and see also alvin j reines skeptics and skepticism in encyclopaedia judaica second edition ed michael berenbaum and fred skolnik jerusalem keter publishing house 2007 a more recent collection of studies is daniel langton ed atheism scepticism and challenges to monotheism gorgias press 2015 skepticism on the god of judaism edit skepticism on the existence of the god of religion relates either to doubts that any supernatural entity such as god exists or that the god of the jews exists as described by the jewish tradition not however ruling out completely the existence of supernatural entities chivi ha balki sherwin wine baruch spinoza elisha ben avuya skepticism on the authenticity of the torah edit skeptics on the authenticity of the torah are individuals who hold a position rejecting the divine authorship of some or all of the torah spinoza korach considered a skeptic by the talmudic sages see also edit apostasy in judaism category jewish skeptics criticism of judaism epikoros gilyonim hiloni jewish heretics jewish schisms jewish secularism list of jewish atheists and agnostics notes edit prov xxx in cambridge bible for schools see further paul haupt s koheleth oder weltschmerz in der bibel 1905 jer xii 1 ber 7a psalm 73 according to ḳid 29b and yer ḥag ii 77b deut v 16 xxii 7 this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain singer isidore et al eds 1901 1906 skeptic the jewish encyclopedia new york funk wagnalls v t e philosophical skepticism types local moral pseudoskepticism radical religious jewish skeptics scientific solipsism philosophers indian sanjaya belatthiputta jayarāśi bhaṭṭa ajñana charvaka pre socratic xenophanes xeniades atomist metrodorus of chios anaxarchus nausiphanes academic skeptics arcesilaus diocles of cnidus lacydes telecles and evander hegesinus carneades hagnon of tarsus metrodorus of stratonicea aristanax clitomachus charmadas aeschines of neapolis philo of larissa cicero gaius aurelius cotta dio of alexandria simon foucher pyrrhonists pyrrho of elis timon agrippa sextus empiricus aenesidemus favorinus william chillingworth richard popkin robert fogelin benson mates scholasticism nicholas of autrecourt renaissance montaigne pierre charron francisco sanches uriel da costa pierre bayle humean david hume gottlob ernst schulze william drummond peter unger concepts acatalepsy aporia cartesian doubt epoché suspension of judgment ignoramus et ignorabimus skeptical scenarios brain in a vat dream argument evil demon five minute hypothesis münchhausen trilemma problem of the criterion problem of induction regress argument simulation hypothesis wax argument responses cogito ergo sum here is one hand semantic externalism process reliabilism epistemic closure contextualism relativism literature barhaspatya sutras academica cicero outlines of pyrrhonism against the dogmatists against the mathematicians essays montaigne discourse on the method a treatise of human nature aenesidemus retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title jewish_skeptics oldid 1371328346 categories jewish skeptics judaism related controversies hidden categories articles with short description short description is different from wikidata use american english from april 2021 all wikipedia articles written in american english use mdy dates from april 2021 all articles with unsourced statements articles with unsourced statements from february 2017 wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1906 jewish encyclopedia wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1906 jewish encyclopedia without a wikisource reference wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1906 jewish encyclopedia this page was last edited on 25 august 2026 at 22 52 utc page was rendered with parsoid text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike 4 0 license additional terms may apply by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy 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