Can faith and reason coexist in Jewish thought?
• var addthis_pub=”mjl08″;var addthis_options = ‘favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live, more’; Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press. Rationalism is the attitude in which religious faith has to justify itself at the bar of reason before it can be accepted. There is much reasoned appeal in the Bible. The Hebrew prophets seek to persuade by rational argument. The translation, in the Jewish Publication Society version, of the verse in Isaiah (1: 28): “Come let reach an understanding says the Lord,” may not be an accurate rendering. A footnote to the translation says: “Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.” Yet the implication that the prophets do employ reason becomes apparent from even the most casual reading of the prophetic books, even though terms like “reason” in the abstract sense are unknown in biblical Hebrew. The Talmud consists almost entirely of reasoned arguments, although the Talmud, like the
