Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy

This exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish proofs for eternity, creation, and the existence of God classifies the proofs systematically, analyses and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Davidson pursues the penetration of some of these Islamic and Jewish arguments into medieval Christian philosophy and, in a few instances, all the way into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophy. He attempts to treat every medieval Arabic and Hebrew proof for eternity, creation, and the existence of God which has philosophical character, disregarding only those that rest entirely on religious faith or fall below a minimum level of plausibility.

Unique in both its classification of the proofs and its comprehensiveness, this will serve historians of philosophy, historians of ideas, and medievalists.