Maimonides did something in the twelfth century that Judaism had not done before: he wrote down what a Jew must believe, and numbered it. In his commentary on the Mishnah, at the tenth chapter of tractate Sanhedrin, he set out thirteen principles, from the existence, unity and incorporeality of God, through prophecy and the divine origin and permanence of the Torah, to divine knowledge, reward and punishment, the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. He added that one who denies any of them has removed himself from the community.
The list met immediate resistance, and the resistance came from within the tradition rather than outside it. Hasdai Crescas argued that the principles were badly chosen and that some were consequences of others rather than foundations. Joseph Albo reduced the foundations to three and built the rest on them as derived beliefs. Others objected to the whole project, on the ground that a tradition whose classical literature is a record of argument does not settle belief by enumeration.
That argument was never resolved by any authority, and it could not be, because Judaism has no body that could resolve it. What happened instead is that the list won by circulation. It was copied, versified, printed in prayer books and taught to children, and a text recited daily by many communities becomes a standard whether or not anyone ever enacted it.