The Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy / י"ג עיקרי האמונה וי"ג מידות הרחמים

• Published in: דעת: כתב-עת לפילוסופיה יהודית וקבלה 2017-01 (84), p.35-82
• Main Authors: גורפינקל, אלי, Gurfinkel, Eli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0334-2336

Many philosophers and theologians have discussed the number of the Maimonidean principles of faith, including the question of why Maimonides listed thirteen principles, no more nor less: Is this the total number of principles that he formulated, or did Maimonides seek to establish the count of principles to attain the typological number of thirteen? Some of these scholars favored the latter possibility. Among them, some proposed drawing a parallel between the thirteen principles of faith and the thirteen Biblical attributes of mercy, and even indicated the connection between each of the principles and one of the attributes of mercy. Such a connection is not self-understood. These are two different conceptual systems: one is based on philosophical and theological principles that were fashioned in the twelfth century, in Maimonides's Commentary on the Mishnah, and the other, on Biblical concepts. Each of these systems includes thirteen items, and the division of one (the attributes of mercy) is open to interpretation and is not unequivocal, thus facilitating many possible theoretical parallels. The most important authorities on the principles of faith, namely, philosophers and theologians from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in Spain, Italy, and the Ottoman empire, rejected this parallelism, which they viewed as homiletics not directed to the underlying reasons and aims that led Maimonides to constitute these principles. Due to their opposition, they did not detail these parallels, nor did they describe any linkage between specific principles and the attributes. The rich scholarly literature that has been written on the principles of faith similarly omitted any description of these parallels. The current article examines various genres of the literature on the principles, mainly those written from a different cultural and intellectual background: Ashkenaz and France in this period, and the later rabbinic tradition. My study teaches that many rabbinic authorities viewed this parallelism positively, and intensively engaged in attempts to describe the nature of these parallels. The current research seeks to shed light on this intellective direction, to survey the ways in which the different rabbinic authorities compared the two systems, and to examine the significance of the parallels for understanding the main conceptions of these authorities.