Rabbi Moshe Taku רבי משה תקו
author of the Ktav Tamim—a voice against the philosophical reading of Scripture
The Torah speaks of the Almighty in words taken from man: hand, eye, speech, He went down, He saw. What to do with those words is the question the whole thirteenth century stood around. Rav Saadya, and the Rambam after him, taught that they cannot be understood literally—He has neither body nor form, and Scripture speaks in the language of men. Rabbi Moshe Taku answered that this road is more dangerous than it looks.
His book is called Ktav Tamim, the Writing of the Wholehearted. His argument runs thus: if we allow ourselves to decide which words of Scripture are said figuratively, we set human reason as judge over what was given at Sinai, and after that each man will reinterpret by his own measure. One must hold, he says, to what is said and to how the Sages understood it, without building onto it.
This argument is not settled, and it is not ours to settle. Both sides stood for the Torah as they understood it: the one guarding the purity of faith from a coarse notion of the Almighty, the other guarding the wholeness of Scripture from the interpreter's licence. We say what the argument was about, and leave the reader both books.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Ktav Tamim of Rabbi Moshe Taku — his own argument and with whom he argues
- Emunot ve-Deot of Rav Saadya Gaon and the Moreh Nevuchim of the Rambam — the side of the argument he disputes, at first hand
Basis: documents and evidence.