How The Wars of God Set the Rules for Investigating Tradition

The Wars of God, the polemical philosophical work in the Maimonidean rationalist tradition, opens with a sustained argument about how Jewish scholars should investigate the claims they receive from earlier authorities.

Three passages from the work map the method. The first establishes the obligation to question. The second describes the legal procedure of seven interrogations used to examine witnesses in a court of law and proposes the same rigor for theological claims. The third dates the rise of the Kabbalistic system to the thirteenth century and asks why it should be exempt from the rules the other parts of tradition follow.

The Obligation to Question

Wars of God 3:2 opens with a sharp claim. To accept a teaching wholesale without investigation, the text argues, is foolishness and evil folly. The wholehearted seeker after truth cannot limit the investigation. The obligation to investigate, the text insists, is a fundamental religious duty.

The reasoning is rabbinic. The Torah requires investigation of legal claims. The same standard, the text argues, should apply to theological claims. A community that examines an alleged murderer with multiple interrogations should not accept an alleged divine revelation on weaker evidence than that.

The teaching has consequences. The Wars of God is, in this opening passage, setting up the methodological grounds for the polemical critiques the book will deliver in later chapters. Every claim, the text is establishing, must clear the same investigative bar.

Seven Interrogations for Every Witness

Wars of God 3:7 moves from principle to procedure. The text cites a precedent from a Kabbalist (described as the master of the Chamber of Blessing) who taught that the court is obligated by positive commandment to examine witnesses through seven distinct interrogations.

Seven, not one. The text takes the position that a court hearing testimony must press the witness on seven separate fronts to verify the testimony's reliability. The investigative bar in Jewish law, in other words, is high enough that even a single witness must answer to seven layers of questioning before the testimony is accepted.

The author then proposes extending the rule. If a court applies seven interrogations to a witness in a criminal case, the rationalist tradition should apply at least the same care to alleged theological revelations. The polemic against undisciplined acceptance is sharpened by the legal analogy.

The Kabbalistic System Dated to the Thirteenth Century

The third passage is the most directly polemical. Wars of God 4:20 dates the rise of the Kabbalistic system to the start of the sixth millennium, roughly the thirteenth century CE.

The author argues that this is recent, by the scale of Jewish tradition. The Kabbalistic system spread through the period of the early medieval Geonim and through subsequent rabbinic generations. The book then asks how a system this recent could claim authority equal to the older Torah and Talmudic tradition. The polemic is methodological. Recent traditions, the author argues, must meet the same investigative standard as older ones.

The teaching has historical edge. The Wars of God is, in this passage, leveraging dating to demand justification. The text is not denying that Kabbalah has profound content. It is denying that the content's profundity exempts it from the seven-interrogation standard the rest of Jewish law requires.

Why the Investigation Standard Was the Argument

Stack the three passages and the methodological backbone of The Wars of God becomes legible. The Maimonidean rationalist tradition the book represents refuses to grant exceptions.

The obligation to investigate is universal. The seven-interrogation court procedure is the model for serious inquiry. Any system that arose recently must meet the same standard the older systems meet. The book's argument is not that Kabbalah is false. It is that Kabbalah, like any claim, must answer the questions the rabbinic legal apparatus has been asking of every other claim for centuries.