Abraham ibn Daud (Hebrew: אַבְרָהָם בֶּן־דָּוִד הַלֵּוִי אִבְּן דָּאוּד, romanized: ʾAvrāhām ben-Dāvīd halLēvī ʾībən Dāʾūd; Arabic: ابراهيم بن داود, romanized: ʾIbrāhīm ibn Daʾūd) was a Spanish-Jewish astronomer, historian and philosopher; born in Córdoba, Spain about 1110; who was said to have been killed for his religious beliefs in Toledo, Spain, about 1180.
Jewish historian Gerson Cohen noted that the alleged leader of the Spanish royal fleet, Abd al-Rahman III, died some thirty years before the story took place, and that the legend of Rabbi Moshe, disguised as a pauper, surprising scholars in a Torah study session was nearly identical to the rise of Hillel the Elder.
[6] His philosophical work, al-ʿaqida l-Rafiya (The Sublime Faith), written in 1168, in Arabic, has been preserved in two Hebrew translations: one by Solomon ben Labi, with the title Emunah Ramah; the other by Samuel Motot.
On the one hand, he fully recognized the merits of Saadia Gaon, although he does not adopt his views on the freedom of the will, notwithstanding that the solution of this problem was to be the chief aim and purpose of his whole system.
Moreover, it is the duty of every thinking Jew to become acquainted with the harmony existing between the fundamental doctrines of Judaism and those of philosophy, and, wherever they seem to contradict one another, to seek a mode of reconciling them.
Knowledge, which had been acquired by philosophers through the evolution of several thousand years, and after overcoming the most serious errors, had been bestowed upon Judaism from the beginning through revelation.
[13] As to moral truths, it may be even assumed as probable that the philosophers did not attain to them through independent study, but rather under the influence of the doctrines of Holy Scripture.
Viewed from a higher standpoint the imperfections adhering to things or individuals would perhaps, in their relation to the whole, even prove to be perfections and advantages.
In its strict and precise form, the notion of possibility is not at all antagonistic to the omniscience of God; for it is easily conceivable that God from the beginning regulated creation, so that for certain cases both alternatives should be "possible" events; that the Creator, in order to grant to human liberty the opportunity to display its own energy, left the final issue of certain actions undecided even for His own knowledge.
[29] Ibn Daud admits that human free will is somewhat limited through the variety of moral dispositions, partly due to natural causes, to be found both in single individuals and in entire nations.
But man is able to overcome his natural disposition and appetites, and to lift himself to a higher plane of morality, by purifying and ennobling himself.
[30] The Torah, and the study of ethics which forms a part of practical philosophy and is designated, by an expression borrowed from Plato,[31] as the "doctrine of the healing of souls," are the guiding stars to this exalted plane; but no scientific presentation of practical philosophy approaches in this regard the lofty heights of the Scriptures, wherein are clearly expressed the most sublime moral principles known to philosophers.