Ibn Daud, Abraham ben David Hallevi

(c. 1110–1180)

The first Jewish Aristotelian, Ibn Daud was concerned, as Aquinas was in the following century, to reconcile philosophy with revealed religion. His principal work is The Exalted Faith, written in Arabic but only surviving in Hebrew translation. He espouses a rationalist but unorthodox set of views, that include limiting God's omniscience in order to make room for free will . He also celebrated the via negativa, or belief that God can only be described in terms of what he is not.