The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised

Marc B. Shapiro is a scholar of Jewish intellectual history, and this Littman Library of Jewish Civilization book is his academic study questioning the doctrinal status of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Jewish faith, examining how variously they were actually received, debated and in places rejected across later rabbinic history rather than treated as settled dogma from the start. Its strength is close engagement with the rabbinic textual record to show genuine historical diversity of opinion on principles now sometimes assumed to be uncontroversial. Its limit is that it is a historical study of reception and debate specifically, so a claim about the Thirteen Principles' own original meaning as Maimonides intended them needs a source focused on Maimonides' own text and context rather than this later reception history.