Maimonides Wrote a Jewish Creed — and It Was Immediately Controversial

Ask most Jews what Jews are supposed to believe and they will either say Judaism doesn't have required beliefs or they will recite — perhaps without knowing the source — the Thirteen Principles of Faith. Both answers contain a partial truth and a significant omission. Judaism does not, traditionally, require a creed the way some other monotheistic religions do. But Maimonides wrote one anyway, in the 12th century, and the reaction from other Jewish scholars was immediate and pointed: he was wrong to do it, and several of his specific formulations were theologically indefensible.

Who Was Maimonides?

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1138–1204 CE), known in Hebrew as the Rambam and in the Greco-Arabic world as Maimonides, was born in Córdoba, Spain, and spent most of his adult life in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt, where he served as the chief rabbi of the Jewish community and as physician to the court of Saladin. He is the most influential Jewish thinker of the medieval period — possibly of all time — and his two monuments are the Mishneh Torah (a comprehensive code of Jewish law, completed c. 1180 CE) and The Guide for the Perplexed (Moreh Nevukhim, completed c. 1190 CE), a philosophical synthesis of Jewish theology and Aristotelian philosophy.

The Thirteen Principles appear in his commentary on the Mishnah, in the introduction to tractate Sanhedrin (written c. 1168 CE, when Maimonides was approximately 30 years old). They were not a standalone document — they were embedded in a legal commentary, almost as a theological aside. Their subsequent fame exceeded anything Maimonides seems to have anticipated.

What Are the Thirteen Principles?

Maimonides' thirteen principles assert: the existence of God, God's unity, God's incorporeality (having no body), God's eternity, the requirement to worship only God, the truth of prophecy, the unique greatness of Moses' prophecy, the divine origin of the Torah, the immutability of the Torah, God's knowledge of all human actions, divine reward and punishment, the coming of the Messiah, and the resurrection of the dead. Each principle was framed as something a Jew is required to believe — and Maimonides was explicit that someone who denied any of them had removed themselves from the Jewish community.

The Midrash Aggadah contains rich traditions about many of these principles — divine reward and punishment, resurrection, messianism — but never framed them as a creed requiring explicit assent.

Who Pushed Back and Why?

The criticism was swift and from formidable scholars. Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (the Raavad, c. 1125–1198 CE, Provence) wrote pointed glosses on Maimonides' code, attacking the principle of divine incorporeality specifically. He did not deny incorporeality as a concept — he denied that believing God had a body made a person a heretic. Many great and pious Jews had held such views, he argued, and they held them based on readings of scripture that were imprecise but sincere. Calling them heretics was unjust.

Later, Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410 CE, Zaragoza, Spain), in his Or HaShem (Light of the Lord, c. 1410 CE), attacked the philosophical foundations of several principles more systematically. The immutability of the Torah principle, he argued, was stated in a form that created logical problems with God's omnipotence. The resurrection principle, as Maimonides formulated it, conflicted with other things Maimonides himself had written elsewhere. And the general project of reducing Judaism to a creed struck many as a Hellenistic imposition on a tradition that defined itself through practice, not belief.

Why Did the Principles Become Canonical Anyway?

Despite the criticism, the Thirteen Principles achieved near-canonical status within a century of Maimonides' death. Two reasons. First, the Ani Maamin poem — a version of the principles written in the first person singular (“I believe with complete faith...”) — was set to music and included in the standard prayer book. Once a formulation is set to music and recited daily, it acquires a life independent of its scholarly controversies. Second, the Yigdal poem (attributed to Daniel ben Judah, Rome, 14th century CE), a liturgical poem based directly on the Thirteen Principles, was adopted into morning prayer services across Jewish communities worldwide.

The principles are now printed in virtually every Ashkenazic and Sephardic prayer book. Most Jews who recite them daily are unaware that they were written by a specific medieval rabbi, that other medieval rabbis rejected significant portions of them, and that they remain technically optional rather than binding on all Jews.

What This Tells Us About Judaism

The Maimonides controversy illustrates something fundamental about Jewish intellectual culture: even canonical formulations can be questioned, and the questioning is not heresy but engagement. The tradition does not require the 13 Principles to be believed without examination. It requires them to be encountered — argued with, understood, wrestled with. The goal is not conformity but informed commitment.

Read Maimonides' philosophy and the full range of medieval Jewish theology at JewishMythology.com.