Rabbi Jehudah ha-levi explains to the Kuzarite king his faith as
follows: “We believe in the God of our forefathers, who brought the
Israelites forth from Egypt by signs and miracles, sustained them in
the wilderness with manna, divided for them the sea and Jordan, gave
them the Law through Moses, exhorted them through His prophets to obey
His commandments: in short, we believe all that is written in the
Torah” (Kuzari, i. 8). He then explains philosophically “the root of
the faith” in the following ten propositions: (1) The universe is
finite; (2) it had a beginning; (3) the time of the beginning had to be
determined by the Divine Being; (4) God is without a beginning; (5) God
is eternal (i.e., without an end); (6) incorporeal; (7) omniscient; (8)
all-wise, all-powerful, living; (9) free in His actions; (10) without
change. To these must be added the belief in prophecy, in the truth of
the prophecies, and in man’s free-will, which he fully discusses in the
course of the book.
Rabbenu Bachya, in his “Duties of the Hearts” (חובות הלבבות),
considers also faith as one of these duties, and expresses it in the
most simple form, “Belief in God and in His Law.” He does not, however,
devote a special chapter to faith. The first chapter treats of the
distinctively Jewish creed of God’s Unity, but less as a duty of belief
than as a duty of research and study for the purpose of philosophically
establishing that God is One. The author states only briefly in the
prefatory notes to the first chapter, that it is our duty to believe in
the Existence, Providence, and Unity of God, as commanded in the verse,
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Maimonides comprehended our belief in thirteen articles, known as the
Thirteen Principles of our Creed. He insists on the fact that these
articles are not the product of chance; they are the result of long
study and deep research. Every one of them is essential, and he who
rejects any of them is an infidel (כופר), and puts himself by such
rejection outside the Jewish community (יוצא מכלל ישראל).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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