The Thirteen Principles of Faith

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.

A philosophical enumeration written in Judaeo-Arabic inside a commentary on a legal text is not, on the face of it, destined for daily recitation. Two poetic reworkings did the work. The first is the Ani Maamin, thirteen short sentences each beginning I believe with perfect faith, which reduce each principle to a line and appear in prayer books as an appendix to the morning service. The second is Yigdal, a metrical hymn, usually attributed to a fourteenth-century Italian poet, which sets the same thirteen in verse and is sung at the close of services in many communities.

Neither is Maimonides. Both compress, and the compression changes things: the twelfth principle in its Ani Maamin form, on awaiting the Messiah though he tarry, has a weight in Jewish memory that the philosophical original does not carry, largely because of the melodies attached to it. The hymn form travelled further than the treatise ever could.

The result is a Judaism that recites a creed while continuing to hold that it has none. Both statements are defensible. There is no council, no subscription, no ordination oath and no agreed penalty for dissent, and Marc Shapiro has assembled a long list of respected authorities who held positions Maimonides declared heretical. There is also a text, in the prayer book, said aloud, listing what a Jew believes.